


reverberations

by thenewlondoner (muleumpyo)



Category: Block B
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, M/M, Time Period: Current, Time Period: Gwangju Uprising, Time Period: Joseon Dynasty, Time Period: Korean War, Time Period: Three Kingdoms of Korea, multiple lives means multiple deaths, ppl die but they come back in other lives idk how that makes people feel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:12:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/muleumpyo/pseuds/thenewlondoner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jiho knows him, the skinny new kid, the vocalist that's going to be part of their group-- what's his name? Right, Ahn Jaehyo. But they've never met before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ONE

 

 

— ONE

 

Jiho looks across the practice room. Sweat drips down the back of his neck, slow and tickling, but the room is already stifled with high summer heat, and it does nothing to cool him. 

 

Kyung throws himself down next to Jiho, back slamming into the wall-length mirrors, and slumps down onto Jiho’s shoulder. His head is damp with sweat and he smells  what Jiho thinks hell might smell like, but he’ll have to confirm when he finally gets there. Hopefully Kyung won’t be there, but that might be too much to ask for.

 

“I’m so tired,” Kyung whines, letting his body go loose until he’s resting all his weight on Jiho. “I think I’m gonna die of tiredness. And this smell.” Jiho wants to groan and shove him off, but he has no energy for that.

 

Instead, he feebly shrugs the shoulder under Kyung’s ear and mutters, “That smell is you. Get off me, loser.” 

 

In response, Kyung slumps more fully against him, and Jiho is gonna die, he’s so fucking overheated. Irritation pings slowly through his body, tempered only slightly by his exhaustion. It’s been three weeks since he got a full night of sleep. Some of the other trainees exchange stories of not sleeping fully for months on end— he’s really on the baby end of the scale, but it’s still painful. And he really does want Kyung to move, and the longer Kyung lies there, unmoving, the more annoyed he gets.

 

He’s just summoning up the energy to actually shove Kyung off when footsteps make him look up.

 

His heart skips a beat before he’s really registering who he’s seeing. Some pretty boy, equally sweaty but all the better looking for it, a thin white shirt clinging to his slightly bowed, broad shoulders. Jiho’s gaze slips down his basketball shorts to his basic tennis shoes, and he is nothing that Jiho would ever aspire to, sartorial or face-wise. But his legs are long and his fingers are slender, slightly knobby wrists leading to nice arms and those _shoulders_.

 

A sudden streak of desire shoots to his groin as Jiho’s eyes flick back up to the boy’s lips, the peaked nose and arching eyebrows. 

 

Fuck, but he looks like some of the guys from the Japanese porn Jiseok brought back from his last trip to Tokyo. There’s a flash of memory, pink mouths on bare skin, the soft huff of breath held close, and warmth gathers in between Jiho’s thighs and pulls taut his stomach. It doesn’t even feel like the normal thought of porn, but as if Jiho lived it already, the sensations so close to real— 

 

Overheated and now slightly hard, Jiho swallows and tries to get back to his thoughts.

 

“Hey, isn’t that the dude who’s going to be part of our group? J-eh— Jaehyo or something?” Kyung mutters into Jiho’s ear, so quietly the guy doesn’t hear. 

 

Flushed and just slightly unsettled, Jiho snorts. _I can’t be stuck with him for the rest of my career, I won’t survive it, I already want to fuck him—_ “He’s not hip-hop enough.” 

 

Kyung splutters a laugh. Jiho joins him, already feeling like it’s tinged with hysteria. 

 

Confusion twists into anger on the guy’s face, darkening his big, brown eyes. He straightens his back, like he’s getting ready for a fight, and those long fingers curl into fists. Jiho wonders if he was one of those boys who came in late to school, getting in fights on the way to and from class. Those guys whose stares Jiho couldn’t back down from, who weren’t afraid to look straight at you as if they _knew_ — Arousal tightens up Jiho’s spine like an electric shock and _god_ , Jiho wants him. 

 

_This is a fucking disaster._

 

“ _What_ did you say?” the guy demands. His face is pretty and he’s skinny as hell, but he could probably hold Jiho down easily. Jiho would be willing to test the theory. The thought twists desire deeper into his gut.

 

Jiho feels the challenge draw him to his feet, and he shoves his hands into his sweatpants pockets to hide his half-hard dick. He saunters over until he’s face-to-face with the dude, and he looks familiar in a vague way— maybe Jiho has seen him around the company. The guy does not look impressed or intimidated, and Jiho is gratified to see that he has at least six centimeters on Jiho, if not more. 

 

A smirk curls Jiho’s face as he figures out how to needle the guy. His lungs feel half-short, like he’s about to fight someone, and energy crawls over his skin. 

 

He feels, despite his exhaustion, alive. The best he’s felt in weeks. 

 

“I said,” Jiho draws out each word, aware he’s an annoying shit but not caring, “that you’re ‘not hip-hop’ enough.”

 

Stubbornness mars Jaehyo’s pretty face and for a moment Jiho feels a flash of recognition so strong he swears he could know Jaehyo, now.

 

Somehow, he feels like he could reach out and kiss Jaehyo right there, drag his body close with a fist in his shirt, something of the challenge in Jaehyo’s expression pressing hard into Jiho’s mouth. Jaehyo’s eyes flick over his face, and Jiho swallows, throat clicking. 

 

He wants to say, “Come here,” like Jaehyo is his friend, his love, someone to hold close.

 

But he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know Jaehyo. 

 

\-- 

 

He has the first dream that night.

[ ](http://thenewlondoner.livejournal.com/9773.html)

 

 


	2. SECONDARY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a mildly graphic depiction of death, incl. blood. If you would prefer to skip this part, duck out when you need to and re-enter at the next ONE.

— SECONDARY

 

Jiho is stumbling down a muddy oxen path that curves in haphazard slips through the woods. Dusk is already on him, deepening the trees’ violet shadows to indigo and sending strange sounds skittering through the underbrush. He wants to stop and investigate, but he doesn’t have time. Rain shuttles down in an early-summer typhoon that leaves his face dripping and hair plastered to the back of his neck. No part of his body is dry anymore.

 

He’s so dizzy he can hardly stand.

 

Every step jars the wound on his side, that aching fist in his chest that he can only breathe shallowly around. Warmth pools around the wound, and he’s sure the cotton clothes underneath his armor are stained dark red. He clutches his side, dismayed that when he pulls away, his hand is dripping with red for a moment, before the thick rain washes it clean.

 

The woods level out into a valley, cleared out into wide, rain-soaked fields. It’s early summer and they’re low with crop, deserted in the coming night. 

 

Jiho falls near an irrigation ditch and digs his hands into the muddy water, scooping it up towards his face. The movement jars him and he coughs hard, gripping to the slippery bank with one hand. The pain in his side tightens until blackness appears around the edges of his vision. He gasps for breath. Bloody spit catches on his glistening hand, and when he gets his breath back it’s even shallower than before. 

 

For a moment, wildly, he thinks that he’ll pass out into the ditch, but the pain subsides after a few long, breathless minutes. Rain beats down on the back of his bowed head and the shoulders of his armor and fills the air with sound. He feels too weak to move, barely able to sit up on his own. He’s completely alone in the empty fields.

 

Perhaps he’ll die out here.

 

The thought is enough to get him to rise, shaking, to his feet. He can barely keep upright as he stumbles towards the farm houses in the distance, at the edge of the fields. In the heavy dusk and shadowed by the thickening rain, their whitewashed sides glow oddly, almost entreatingly, soft beacons that direct him forward. 

 

But when someone rounds the corner of the nearest house, Jiho immediately stills and yanks his short sword out from the sheath at his hip.

 

The boy, barely out of his teen years, drops the pile of the sticks in his arms and holds up his hands. He can’t be much older than Jiho, with his thin hands and big black eyes, but to Jiho, his innocent face looks like a child’s.

 

Even with his vision swimming with pain, he knows it’s Jaehyo. 

 

“Where is the doctor?” Jiho rasps out, barely able to speak. Rain sluices over his face, running into his grip on the sword’s handle.

 

Jaehyo stares at him, and his gaze is less frightened now, more calculating. His eyebrows furrow as his eyes trace over the dagger wobbling in Jiho’s grip. They settle on the wound on his side and the huge stain of blood it has formed through his armor.

 

“The doctor!” Jiho yells, but it comes out as a groan as the pain tightens like a fist in his chest. He realizes he can’t hold himself up only a moment before his knees go weak and give out. The dagger falls from his grip. 

 

In that split second, Jaehyo rushes forward towards it, diving down. As he collapses, Jiho thinks that this is it. To be killed by his own dagger, how fitting; a traitor for the coward he turned out to be. 

 

Jaehyo catches Jiho hard around the middle and lowers him to the ground. His hands dig into the armor stretched over Jiho’s shoulders and his body cushions Jiho’s from the muddy ground. Jiho barely has enough time to be surprised before the pain stretches up his spine and blacks his mind out.

 

— 

 

Time goes funny for a while, then, stretching long in the darkness of his mind and speeding up in the short bursts where he’s awake. It should be backwards, flipped around, somehow the other way, but being awake is more dreamlike than the odd nightmares that crowd the darkness. 

 

Jaehyo watches over him, sometimes, wakes him with soft words and soft hands on the wound on his side. He soothes Jiho back to sleep, putting water past his lips or slips of soup, just enough warm broth to keep Jiho alive. 

 

Once, Jiho wakes in the middle of the night with tears slick across his face and Jaehyo is there, hands pressing on Jiho’s chest and curling around the back of his neck. 

 

“Shh, it’s okay,” Jaehyo whispers, voice lower than Jiho remembers. _Remembers? They’ve never met before._ His dark eyes flicker with the light of the lamp in the corner, his fine features thrown into shadow. Jiho can’t remember what he was dreaming about, though his heart is racing and his eyes burn with tears. The pain from his side has spread across his entire torso like a disease. Somehow, Jaehyo’s voice sets his heart back to its original pace, and his hands are soft across Jiho’s skin. “Go back to sleep, it’s okay.”

 

Jiho doesn’t know why he believes him, but he does.

 

Sometimes Jiho wakes in the day, when the light is thick through the open door, and Jaehyo is gone.

 

The first time it happens, he panics and tries to stand. He isn’t sure if he’s going to find Jaehyo or trying to escape, but when he begins to rise, that latent pain sears through him and slams him back on the straw mattress, gasping for breath. The blackness finds him easily, then, and he doesn’t dream.

 

The next time he wakes, it’s just barely dawn. Across the packed dirt floor of the hut, he can see Jaehyo curled up on another mattress. His face is smashed up against a round pillow and the slow rise and fall of his chest tells Jiho that he’s asleep. Jiho’s armor is stacked by his feet, cleaned of the dirt and blood that had caked it for weeks.

 

Jiho feels more lucid than he has in days and the pain in his side has faded to just a continuous throb, more of a reminder than a hindrance. He pushes himself up slowly, groaning. 

 

Jaehyo stirs on the opposite mattress, and he wakes in slow starts, until he is blinking sleepily at Jiho for a few moments, hair mussed from sleep and clothes in disarray around his shoulders.

 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, voice low but enough to carry across the small room. His Silla accent is almost so strong Jiho can’t understand. It just reminds him that here he is, in enemy territory, and Jiho’s heartbeat kicks up, throbbing through his skin.

 

But Jaehyo rises sedately and comes over to kneel by Jiho’s side, slight fingers finding the edges of the bandage wrapped around Jiho’s waist. Somehow, the touch barely hurts. Jiho wonders how long he’s been asleep. 

 

Jaehyo peels the bandage from his side and the pungent stink of cut flesh and medicinal herbs almost makes Jiho gag. He thinks he should want to fight back, but Jaehyo isn’t even looking at him and doesn’t seem to be asking for permission. “Ah,” Jaehyo says, reaching out and quickly fixing a few things. When Jiho looks down at it, stomach heaving, the wound looks a lot better than before. Even under the poultice spread across it, he can tell that it’s already healing.

 

“Are you the doctor?” Jiho asks, and his voice sounds strange, it’s been so long since he last spoke. His voice is so different from Jaehyo’s, the accent gruff and unchanged through his years in the military. He worries that his voice will give him away, but there’s nothing in the set of Jaehyo’s shoulders that betrays a misgiving. 

 

Jiho supposes if a dagger threatening didn’t dissuade him, a voice might be too weak to.

 

“Yes. Or his son.” Jaehyo’s eyes flick up to him and he smiles. He’s so young, and in the soft, dawn light, he’s beautiful. 

 

Desperately, Jiho wants to laugh, but the action catches over the wound and he groans as pain lances across his skin and up the arch of his back. Darkness curls at the edges of his vision until he can barely hold onto consciousness and his breaths fall shallowly in his chest. 

 

He knows some men in the military take each other for lovers, and there are whispers of special sections of the brothels that hide the pale, painted faces of boys instead of women, but he’s never allowed himself to venture that far into his fantasies. Panic clutches at him. He can’t start now. Not here.

 

Jaehyo’s hands slip across his skin and up to his face, long fingers pressing into the cut of his cheekbone and over the thick beat of his blood in his neck. 

 

“Are you alright?” Jaehyo whispers, the press of his fingers over the quickening pace of Jiho’s heartbeat. Somehow, the touch incites him and calms him at the same time. “Does it still hurt?” 

 

Jiho clenches his jaw, trying to ignore how close Jaehyo is. “I’m fine,” he says, trying to force himself up further. Jaehyo’s hands grip his shoulders tightly and force him back on the bed, and he should protest, shouldn’t let this happen to him, but he goes, relaxing back until Jaehyo releases him.

 

“I should go,” Jiho protests in a weak voice, but Jaehyo just shakes his head and starts to work on rewrapping the wound. He doesn’t want to go back, he doesn’t know why he’s saying this, except wouldn’t it be strange that he didn’t think of doing so? “I need to get back to my encampment, they’ll be waiting—“ but Jaehyo shakes his head again, sharper this time. He isn’t looking at Jiho, but there’s something in the corner of his gaze that seems sharp, scared. It’s that look that keeps Jiho lying back across the pallet, the idea that Jaehyo might be scared _for_ him. 

 

“You can’t go back yet,” Jaehyo says, his voice more authoritative this time, as he secures the wrapping around Jiho’s waist. “You’re not even close to healed. You need to rest.”

 

Jaehyo gives him something after, that makes his head feel woozy and holds down his limbs like wood, and he falls into an uneasy sleep, full of dreams of soft touches and the sharpness of cold rain.

 

—

 

He stays two weeks or more in that dark room, lying in bed. The days pass in a strange tempo of heavy, medicated sleep, and hours spent alone while Jaehyo is out, tending to his other patients. Jiho isn’t allowed outside while the sun is still out, and rarely even when it isn’t, so he spends too much time lying on the pallet on the floor, cataloguing the sun against the rough walls and thinking about things he has no business to be thinking about. 

 

He and Jaehyo spend hours tucked together in that little room, whenever Jaehyo isn’t called away or Jiho isn’t put to sleep. Sometimes they talk, of their lives, of Jaehyo’s patients, his friends, anything but the war they both know is going on so close by. There are mentions in the village, Jiho knows, of the battles fought many _li_ away, of the resources that are being called for. Jaehyo doesn’t talk about it, sometimes just mentions the outrage that people express over the capture and confiscation of goods at the markets they frequent, how there are suddenly more soldiers than ever before, but refuses to talk of more.

 

Jiho knows he should care about these things, should press Jaehyo for more information about the battles being fought, but he’s lost whatever interest he might have had. In the dark of Jaehyo’s room, the memories of his encampment seem far away. Sometimes he’ll awake in the night, held down by the overwhelming sleep but mind racing with memories of blood on his skin, rain thick in his eyes, and mud up to his knees. When he falls back asleep, he finds his throat dry in the morning and the soft smile of Jaehyo enough for him, for now. He doesn’t want to worry Jaehyo by asking about something he isn’t sure he wants to know. 

 

Jaehyo helps him get up in the dark of the morning, when the stars are still sharp on the horizon and dawn hasn’t made its way onto the sky, and takes him outside. The pain is so bad the first few days that Jiho can’t even stand without Jaehyo’s shoulder under his arm, but as the days pass, his feet become more steady on the ground and he can shuffle around the little courtyard with Jaehyo watching, dark eyes tracing over him as he walks. 

 

It should worry him, the intent way that Jaehyo watches him when he speaks, or the way that he can’t stop himself from watching as Jaehyo prepares food for them both, his dark head bowed, or at the quickness of his long fingers as he changes Jiho’s bandages. There is something beneath the ease of their words to each other, a troubling undercurrent that Jiho can’t get a grasp on. It does something odd to him, unfurls something in his chest that is hot and somewhat quick like a wound, but too sweet to be from a knife or poison. It makes Jiho want to call across the short distance of the room to Jaehyo’s form at night, ask him in soft words to come closer, curl up with him, and he doesn’t understand it.

 

Another typhoon gathers in the faraway ocean and blows in one night, sending heavy rain scattering over the little front yard of Jaehyo’s house. Jaehyo is out most of the time and he doesn’t come in for hours yet, until the beat of the rain against the tile of the roof has become a constant murmur of sound that Jiho’s thoughts about Jaehyo bounce back and forth from, trapped as they are, as he is. 

 

Jaehyo is dripping wet when he returns, his clothes completely soaked through. There’s something different in the set of Jaehyo’s expression that’s amplified by his wet hair plastered to his neck, seriousness marking the corners of his eyes, and he barely greets Jiho when he comes in. 

 

As he strips off his wet clothes, Jiho swallows and tries to look away. But his eyes track back and follow the perfunctory movements as Jaehyo pulls the cotton and silk from his shoulders, leaving him in just his pants, his shoulders dotted with rain. 

 

Desire races through Jiho and he wants to stand and cross the room, press his face in between Jaehyo’s shoulder blades. He wants to lick at the skin, cool still, until it warms under his mouth and he can taste Jaehyo. It’s so sudden and he wants Jaehyo’s breath to hitch and for him to turn until they’re so close and maybe he can cross the space between their mouths. 

 

The shot of arousal that hits his stomach is so sudden and strong he feels his muscles clench, and he has to look away. They’re on the verge of something and Jiho can’t make himself stop, though he knows that he needs to.

 

“Hey, want me to check your side?” Jaehyo asks, and Jiho looks over again to see him fully dressed. Jaehyo smiles, but his eyes are dark and he’s watching Jiho more closely than usual.

 

That feeling unfurls between them, like a crane’s wings preparing for flight. It feels too big for Jiho’s chest, but he rises slowly and starts to unwrap the cotton tie around his waist. Jaehyo’s hands are steady and sure as they always are as they arc across his skin, checking at the edges of the wound where it has begun to heal. 

 

Goosebumps rise all along his ribs and pebble his nipples, and he has to suppress a shiver at the touch. Jaehyo is standing so close that he can smell the slight touch of rain in his hair, mixed with the lower, musky scent of his skin. He wants to press closer and bury himself in that smell, but then Jaehyo looks up.

 

Jiho doesn’t know what to say, feels the words crawl back his throat and block it up. 

 

“Are you okay?” Jaehyo asks, his voice loweredd. His hands are still on Jiho’s sides and Jiho _wants_ , but he’s afraid of this, afraid of everything this might be and he can’t make himself speak.

 

So he just nods, and Jaehyo slips away. His heart sinks in his chest, at the way that Jaehyo doesn’t press him for anything more. Perhaps he doesn’t want it? and the fear of that truth makes Jiho silent. 

 

They eat dinner together but there’s an undercurrent of awkwardness now that Jiho can’t push through. Jaehyo smiles and tries to be normal, but they both feel it. It’s the first night that Jiho thinks that maybe he should leave. But even for that, his courage has fled. 

 

—

 

The attack comes in the night, two days later. Jiho wakes to a sense of unease that seems unsupported by the quiet pre-dawn. Jaehyo, across the softly-lit room, sleeps on. Jiho rolls slowly to his feet, shedding the blanket and supporting himself on the wooden wall as he makes his way towards the door.

 

When he steps out into the small courtyard, the unease tightens into a sharp sense of apprehension. The typhoon has cleared and left the fields full and the ground rife with puddles. Their glassy surfaces reflect the light of a weak moon, and the air is thick with petrichor. The world is still around him, even the breeze put to rest by the night, but something grates at his skin, like he’s missing something.

 

He turns, and the soft shadows across the wide swath of wet fields ripple with something like intent. Before he knows what he’s doing, Jiho has pressed himself to the wall of the house. It’s so dark he can barely see the soldiers crossing towards the village, the darkness of their armor bleeding into the night, but he can hear the thick sound of their footsteps growing closer.

 

He lurches into the house, ignoring the sharp ping of his healing wound, his heart slamming in his chest. Jaehyo is still sleeping on, oblivious. It won’t be dawn for hours yet, but they don’t have that time.

 

_If only there was more time—_

 

He falls onto his knees and grips Jaehyo’s shoulders softly, trying to keep his touches light. Jaehyo tenses and then rolls over, mussed from sleep and his voice thick with it. Jiho wants to kiss him, those dark eyes still half-closed, but—

 

“What is it?” Jaehyo mumbles, still caught up in sleep, before he seems to catch something in Jiho’s expression. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?” he sits up abruptly and reaches out for Jiho’s torso, his eyes suddenly more alert.

 

“We need to go, right now,” Jiho says, voice sharp, catching Jaehyo’s hands in his and starting to rise. “They’re here, right now, we need to go—“ Jaehyo rises more slowly, even as Jiho pulls at him, confused.

 

“Who— who’s here?”

 

Jiho keeps leading him towards the door but Jaehyo is beginning to pull back from his grip.

 

“Soldiers,” Jiho bites out, trying to keep ahold of Jaehyo but unable to. “Goguryeo soldiers. Our soldiers. They’re here and we need to go,” but Jaehyo pulls away from him completely, then, looking horrified.

 

“Soldiers,” he repeats in a quiet voice. “If that’s true, then—“

 

Jiho pushes in close and bundles Jaehyo up into his arms, before he starts to pull him towards the door. Desperation tries to mask his voice, but he says, “We can’t wait. We have to go right now.”

 

Jaehyo pushes himself from Jiho’s arms. “What if they’re injured? I can help them—“

 

“No!” Jiho yells, and the cry is sharp enough that Jaehyo looks caught out, surprised. “That’s not why they’re here,” he says, and he reaches out for Jaehyo but Jaehyo jerks away, spins around and starts to look for his supplies. 

 

Jiho’s vision starts to narrow down to nothing as the panic grabs at his throat. They need to go, _now_. He grips Jaehyo’s wrist, holding him back from his strips of cotton and bottles of various medicines. 

 

“That’s not why they’re here,” he says, trying to pull at Jaehyo, convince himself of something he’s known deep in his gut. “They’re here to destroy this village and we don’t have time,” but Jaehyo elbows him away, hands compiling his medicines. His hands are shaking but his eyes are fierce as he turns to glare at Jiho.

 

“All the more reason to stay. These are my friends and—“

 

Jiho opens his mouth to protest when a long, high scream makes them both pause and look over at the door. A stripe of unease flares all down Jiho’s spine; he recognizes that sound.

 

“Let’s go, please,” he pleads, voice shaky. There’s bravery and there’s stupidity, and this is definitely the latter.

 

Jaehyo strides towards the door and Jiho follows, barreling towards him in one last act of desperation. He slams into Jaehyo’s back, arms tightening around Jaehyo’s torso until they’re fully crushed together, Jaehyo’s back to his front. Through the thin cotton over Jaehyo’s chest, Jiho can feel his heartbeat, thrumming quick through his veins, and his breaths rise and fall under Jiho’s hands.

 

“Please,” Jiho asks, face buried in Jaehyo’s neck. Seconds pass, shouldered in together. “Please, don’t.”

 

Jaehyo’s breath hitches and Jiho slides his arms more tightly around him.

 

Then Jaehyo pulls himself from Jiho’s grip and turns. There’s something in his gaze that Jiho can’t read, though his heart falls at what it must mean. 

 

Jaehyo reaches out and cups his face, warmth in his dark gaze. He looks prepared to say something, but the words are lost. “I—,” he starts, then surges forward into Jiho’s space. He kisses Jiho hard on the mouth, all of his normal delicacy gone.

 

Jiho grabs for him, holds him fast there even when Jaehyo pulls back briefly, mouth red, mumbling, “Sorry, sorry,” before leaning in to kiss him tenderly. Jiho kisses back, licking into Jaehyo’s mouth and opening him up until their tongues can slide against each other, hot. A burning lick of arousal slides down Jiho’s chest and curls in the pit of his groin and he moans around the feeling, desperate, greedy for more. 

 

All of his fears from before have fled in the wake of this kiss, the way that Jaehyo grabs at his shoulders, slides his hands up and into Jiho’s hair, holding him in place.

 

But then Jaehyo pulls himself away a moment later, eyes wild and mouth slick with Jiho’s kiss. He makes an incomprehensible noise when Jiho reaches for him again, and turns to disappear out the door. Jiho reaches for him, but he’s not fast enough. 

 

A different kind of desperation pours cold over Jiho’s skin. He swears and dives for his sword, propped up against the wall near Jaehyo’s bed and his long-untouched armor. There’s no time to put it on now, so he just runs out after Jaehyo, fear running cold through his veins.

 

The village is small and pressed compactly in together, but Jiho has never made it further than Jaehyo’s little courtyard. He loses Jaehyo easily in the dark corridors of houses pressed in together. The village is waking up quickly, he can tell, the faint lights flickering to life in windows passing, the sounds of confused voices raising behind mud-thick walls.

 

Another scream pierces the night, and Jiho swings towards it as it’s followed by another, harsher, screaming voice. 

 

A darkly-clad soldier appears out of the darkness, flanked by two more. Jiho throws himself into hiding mere seconds before they pass, breath held in his throat. 

 

Heart thrumming in his ears, Jiho threads through the village, towards the raised voices. He can hear doors being shoved open and more raised voices break the spell of night. He rounds the entrance to a large courtyard, flanked by an ornate gate. Fire blazes in the corner of his vision and soldiers push into the wooden doors of a large farmhouse, lit branches in hand or swords unsheathed. 

 

A woman, grey-haired and disheveled, is screaming at a soldier in the center of the courtyard. She reaches out to beat on his chest and faceplate with her bare fists as she yells into his face. There’s a man, too, on the floor, blood pooling around the body. For a moment, blind panic paralyzes Jiho. But it’s not Jaehyo. 

 

Jaehyo is crouched next to the man on the ground, hands pressing into the wound on his chest. His arms glimmer in the low light with dark liquid, and his white linen pants are already stained with blood.

 

The soldier shoves the woman off and steps towards Jaehyo. Jiho sprints into the courtyard before he can think, not breathing. The soldier grabs Jaehyo by the front of his tunic and yanks him up and Jiho has stripped the sword of its scabbard and lands a striking cut to the back of the man’s knee, where the armor doesn’t cover.

 

Blood spurts from the wound and he drops Jaehyo, sword raising, but Jiho lunges the blade upwards, cutting into the soldier’s throat. It’s so easy, so horrifyingly easy as blood spurts in a surprising rush from the man’s throat, against his control, spilling down his throat and over his dark armor. Jiho’s learned these moves from birth and even in battle he couldn’t find the heart to fight another man, had run at the first wound he received, and yet here he is. 

 

Surprised numbness blackens Jiho’s thoughts.

 

_I killed a man._

 

He turns to look at Jaehyo, who is staring up at him, open-mouthed.

 

“Let’s go,” Jiho whispers. He is barely able to speak. There’s a constant wail in the background and the buildings are burning and all of this is chaos they need to break free from. Smoke is beginning to fill Jiho’s lungs and burn at the corners of his eyes, sharp and acrid. 

 

Jaehyo stands on shaky legs, hands grasping at Jiho’s arm. Blood from the man on the floor seeps into the cotton of his shirt. Jiho thinks he’s going to collapse himself but— but first, they need to get themselves out of here.

 

The others have seen them, he knows. He half-drags Jaehyo towards the winged entrance, adrenaline making him numb to everything else but that dark portal to somewhere else, towards freedom.

 

_More time—_

_We just need more time._

 

The first soldier rounds Jiho on the right and Jiho drops Jaehyo’s wrist from his grip. He fights on instinct, on drills woven deep into his muscles through years of training, on fear that tightens his throat and narrows his gaze. The soldier falls and Jiho is bleeding from the thigh but he can’t feel it, and yet when he turns Jaehyo is on the ground.

 

Darkness has bloomed across his chest, the white of his cotton nightshirt disappearing under a fast-growing pool of dark liquid. Jaehyo is staring up at him, blinking slowly, his hands pressing into the wound on his chest. 

 

Jiho can’t breathe.

 

The soldier standing over Jaehyo steps towards Jiho and he lunges forward in response, mind gone blank. Emotion crushes at him, trying to find a way through the numbness, but there’s nothing left but instinct. 

 

He forces that soldier to fall, too, but his stomach is bleeding now, a larger wound cutting across the first and it’s almost a relief that a blow from behind knocks him down. He collapses on Jaehyo’s chest, hand pressed to that hot wound and the faint rise and fall of Jaehyo’s breath. 

 

Tears glimmer at the edge of Jaehyo’s eyes, flickering across their dark expanse. His lips tremble. 

 

“I don’t want to die,” he whispers, tears slipping past his lashes and sliding down his temples.

 

Jiho laughs, a little hysterical. Blood is draining from him, pooling into the front of his shirt. 

 

“Me neither,” he says, pressing hard down on the wound on Jaehyo’s chest, but his arms are weak. Jaehyo is bleeding too fast. So is he, and there’s nothing to be done. “I don’t want to die alone,” he says, trying to laugh, but it comes out as a sob instead. Jaehyo jerks his hand up and grasps onto Jiho’s hand, the grip slipping a little because of all of the blood. He looks over at Jiho from the corner of his eye, another tear sliding down his cheek. 

 

Jiho’s own breaths shallow and the pain is almost overwhelming. _This can’t be the end,_ Jiho thinks, prays. _This can’t be it_ , he demands. _I need more time, he needs more time— we need time._

 

_This can’t be it._

 

Jaehyo’s chest settles to a stop, his eyes half-open. 

 

_Let us meet again, for however long we can. Please, more time—_ Jiho thinks, before pain blots out the rest.

 

— ONE

 

He has the first dream that night.

 

Jiho won’t remember it, years later, that he wakes halfway into the humid darkness of a July night, covered all over in a fine sheen of sweat and heart beating a heavy, quick rhythm into his ears. He won’t remember only feeling an aching sense of dread that his sleep-heavy brain won’t be able to explain before the dim lights remind him that he’s here, alive.

 

In the darkness, he’ll still fear that the warm liquid sliding down his arms isn’t sweat, but the blood of someone he was supposed to help— supposed to save. And even when he raises his hands to his face and sees in the dim light of the apartment block opposite that they’re clean, and he lies down again, he won’t be able to sleep for a long time. 

 

He won’t remember any of it— his heartbeat settling, the dream bleeding into the darkness like that blood, only wiped clean by sleep.

 

— 

 

He won’t even remember that it’s Jaehyo in his dream, or that he dreamt at all.

[ ](http://thenewlondoner.livejournal.com/10188.html)

 

 


	3. TERTIARY

— TERTIARY

 

Jiho is the last to leave the festival hall, feet seeming stuck in place and heart— heart long gone. 

 

He only leaves when the servants begin to come in to clear away the mats on the floor and empty the braziers that have long since filled with ash. Shaking his head, he looks around and realizes that everyone else is gone. 

 

He bursts into the corridor outside of the festival hall, where his attendant waits, kneeling still.

 

“Come, come,” he importunes, taking off down the corridor without looking back to see if he’s being followed. He’s a high ranking bureaucrat, he knows he’s always followed. His skin is running with energy and he wants to yell, wants to go back in time and kneel on the floor and let the performance restart and the notes to fill his ears again. He wishes he still had his heart to lose to it again. 

 

Servants open the door to the outside and he barely has time to sit down and have his shoes put on him before he starts striding across the courtyard. Crisp autumn air bites at his nose and the tips of his fingers, but there’s too much excitement, too much elation to care.

 

He strides across the length of the courtyard and spins around to walk back. His head is still ringing with the memory of the notes sung, deeper than the trills of birds and richer than the sounds of the _gayageum_. 

 

“Astounding,” he declares to the world, uncaring of the servants crossing at the edges of the courtyard. He thinks he’ll be hearing those songs in his head for years to come, and yet he knows it won’t be enough. He spins around when he reaches the edge of the courtyard again, blue silk robes flapping against his legs. “Wasn’t that amazing? I know you were listening, don’t lie.”

 

His attendant is standing a respectful distance away, hands tucked into his sleeves. “Very well done,” he demurs. 

 

Jiho scoffs, waving his hand, though he knows it’s high praise from his quiet manservant. “‘Well done.’ You make it sound like food! So ordinary. But that— that was _beautiful_.” Jiho walks in a circle around the edge of the courtyard, letting the corners box him in as he follows the line of the buildings, agitated, trying to figure a way around this. 

 

A thought strikes him and he turns back, pointing to his manservant. “You must find me his name, so I may write to him.”

 

His attendant doesn’t speak for a moment, lips pressed together in thought. He must see a flaw in Jiho’s plan, and Jiho stops and looks over at him. “So? Cannot it be done?” he demands, a little more sharply than he intends.

 

“Yes,” his attendant replies slowly, brow wrinkling. “But—,” he starts, then stops, shaking his head. He raises one hand to his lips, indicating a secret, and Jiho huffs. He’s too cautious sometimes, his attendant, but he ducks under the bridge connecting two of the buildings and sets off towards his quarters just the same. 

 

He cuts around the gravel footpath, hearing the steady footsteps of his manservant behind him. He wishes he had the skill to write down the notes he had heard, or at least read them and understand, so he could remember perfectly again the songs of tonight. But that was a different kind of women’s domain, music, not his. And a few select men, those singers whose voices were not broken and could reach those lovely heights, and those who had been trained since birth to play the instruments to match such a voice.

 

Jiho growls, low in his throat. All of his political training, all of the annals he’s read, and it all seems like nothing compared to that music. He feels useless and yet freed, as if the performance struck away his old self and left only the core left, the most vital part of his soul and he’s realized that’s all that matters. 

 

“But?” he asks, when they’ve reached the familiar stone walls that surround his quarters. He pushes open the gate himself and steps through into the small courtyard, turning straight towards his study. He has the sudden urge to burn all of his scrolls and the books piled around the small room. They seem so useless now. 

 

“The king brought him in, master.”

 

Jiho waves his hand at this, dropping his shoes off and walking into his study. “I’m just going to write to him to express my admiration, nothing else.”

 

His attendant remains quiet until Jiho has settled himself on the floor in front of his desk and pulled out a roll of parchment. 

 

“Master,” he says, quiet and cautioning. Jiho can’t look at him, doesn’t want to see the worry that’s surely scrawled across his already lined forehead. “I know your intentions are good, but you know the king. You know how he is.”

 

Jiho frowns, digging his fingernails into the palm of his hand for a moment before consciously unclenching his hand. “Yes, I know _my cousin_ very well.”

 

There’s a long silence from behind him that notches up the tension in Jiho’s spine. “You know he doesn’t share.”

 

Jiho’s mouth tightens, annoyed at the implication even though he understands the intent. “I don’t share his tastes in bed, merely in music. This time, at least. Who knows where he found that horrible foreign singer at the last concert,” he scoffs. Despite his words, something a little like fear and a little like a challenge spark up in his heart. “Now, find me that name.”

 

With a short, silent bow that seems disbelieving, knowing his attendant for as long as Jiho has, the man departs. 

 

—

 

A week later, Jiho is still staring at a blank sheet of paper, mind swirling. _How to begin?_ He’s normally so verbose, but this small task has tied his mind up for the past week.

 

_Your performance was—_ so trite, he thinks, and discards the thought. He’s been thinking about this all week but he hasn’t been able to come up with the right words, and he hasn’t been able to do any work, either. Requests come to his door every hour for work to be done, plans to be made or laws to be checked, and Jiho has ignored them all. 

 

_Thank you for—_ no. He slides backwards until he’s lying on his back in the middle of his study. He closes his eyes, and again the song picks up in his ears, like he’s still in the festival hall and that man is singing, voice clear. His heart swells until it presses pain into his chest, but it’s a sweet ache, even now. 

 

Finally, he sits up and picks up his brush to draw the first strokes. 

 

_Every morning I’ve woken to the echoes of your voice and for once I don’t regret waking at the rise of dawn, if it means I can revisit the memory of your performance. But my memory is already losing bits of your song and dawn is drawing darker every day because of it. When do you next perform?_

 

He sends the carefully rolled note with his manservant around noon, some foreign feeling in his chest. He can’t tell if it’s the challenge of messaging of the king’s favorite singer, or merely anticipation of the response. 

 

It’s not the chaste note he knows his manservant wants him to send, but it’s a mere letter. They’ve never even come close enough to let Jiho see his veiled face, let alone touch. There’s no danger here. 

 

—

 

The response comes two days later, wrapped in simple white string. His manservant hands over the letter and disappears, closing the door of the study behind him. Somehow, waiting for a response has made it even more impossible to do work. Jiho can’t concentrate on anything, and has told his servants to tell the others that he’s ill and unable to take requests at the moment. 

 

He unfurls the letter, surprised to see the characters drawn so precisely. They’re almost like children’s, the way they curl in on themselves in dark curves drawn without the careless precision of the bureaucratic elite, but they’re endearing just the same. Somehow, he knows they’re Jaehyo’s words, scrawled across the paper in his own hand.

 

When he begins to read, he hears the words in Jaehyo’s voice.

 

_I’m sorry to have been the reason for your waking before dawn. I hear the sunrise is often beautiful, though I am rarely awake for it. I think, perhaps, that the reason it grows darker is more for the winter coming than because of my voice. If I could sing the sun into shining, it would be summer too long just so I could lie in the warmth of its days, and yet autumn is nearly past. As always, I sing at the king’s request._

 

There’s a long, elegant signature that Jiho can barely read, but he doesn’t mind. He wants to laugh at the return note, just the slightest hint of edge to the words, telling Jiho he doesn’t want to be addressed like a woman he is trying to woo, not that he has had much experience doing that. But there’s something else, an undertone of flirtation that arches down Jiho’s spine and sends him scrambling to reply. 

 

_It is my own mind that wakes me with remnants of your voice, so there is no need to apologize. The sunrise is beautiful if one is prepared for it, even alone, but it is the company to a sunrise that lifts it beyond all other times. It is when the dreams of the night can mix with the softness of the new day, and all the possibilities of the world lie in front of one. If you could sing the sun into shining, perhaps I would ask you to sing the sunrise into being for longer, draw the dawn out so you could see its beauty._

 

He doesn’t allow himself to think too deeply about the words that are coming from his brush. If he stops to think, he won’t write them, and then whatever comes out afterwards, overthought, might as well be a lie. 

 

The response comes so quickly afterwards that Jiho is surprised. It’s been barely a day, which means that Jaehyo must be in the palace or somewhere close by in Hanyang. The thought quickens Jiho’s pulse, sends goosebumps skittering across his skin just as much as the words that he reads in Jaehyo’s low, sweet voice.

 

_You would ask me to sing the sunrise for you? A tricky skill. You make it sound beautiful but I am hard to wake. You would spend more time attempting to wake me then admiring the lightening sky, which I could not abide. Perhaps I am not the right companion for your morning hours, and you should find a songbird instead. They rise so easily and their voices are much sweeter than mine could ever be._

 

Jiho rushes off the next letter without thinking about what he’s writing. His heartbeat is thick in his throat at the words, the demur in Jaehyo’s writing that seems at odd with his skill. He wants, more than anything, to let his praise reach Jaehyo’s heart. 

 

_It would be better, then, to keep you awake all night before the dawn, if only to make sure you could see it with me. I rarely keep company until the dawn hours and a songbird would be a pale comparison to your sweet voice. The enjoyment of your smart company would surely sharpen the pleasure of the sun’s rise. Please, let me extend the invitation for your accompaniment one morning so we may watch the sunrise together, even if it might be far in the future._

 

The idea of Jaehyo in his rooms, seated across the table from him as the dawn lightens the rice paper in the preparation for the morning, sets something aflame in Jiho. It would be so easy to reach across the table and touch his face or his cool, soft fingertips. Jiho swallows, trying to ignore the way his heart picks up at the idea. He rolls up the scroll tightly and knots the tie around it, hoping that none of his urgency comes across in the words drawn across the fine paper, afraid of what it might mean, for both him and the singer he writes to.

 

The returning letter, when it comes, however, is quite chaste. 

 

_I would be honored to take breakfast with you, though I don’t see what pleasure you could have in my long-risen self. Even those that know me laugh at my sleepy face, and though I might be able to open my eyes for your sunrise, I doubt I could give it the true greeting that it needs._

 

A smile presses at the corners of Jiho’s lips at the thought of Jaehyo’s messy hair and sleep-puffy face, leaning on the table as they wait for breakfast, the doors to the outside thrown open. He wonders what it would be like if Jaehyo came to visit his family’s house in the mountains to the north of Hanyang, where the morning air is crisp before the sunrise and the rising sun pulls the soft smell of loam from the earth as it strikes out over the trees. 

 

_Just your presence would be greeting enough. I cannot promise not to laugh, but if we are both to stay awake until an early hour, you will have the chance to laugh at my own long-woken expression, so perhaps it would be a fair trade._

 

Jiho takes a deep breath, aware of how his heart is beating triple time against his chest. He doesn’t understand the ache of want that trembles underneath his skin, or why it can no longer be completely soothed by words alone.

 

—

 

The letters come daily, twice daily, up to three times a day, run back and forth between Jaehyo’s rooms and the section of the palace that Jiho lives in by Jiho’s quiet attendant, or one of the discreet men who serve Jaehyo. He should be working, but the missives he’s given by the officials no longer interest him. 

 

He knows there is talk spreading through the palace and among the men he works with, rumors of his sudden disappearance from court life. His attendant tells him what the other servants are whispering to each other, what they overhear their masters and mistresses speaking about through the paper-thin doors or while they serve them their food. 

 

“This is dangerous,” his attendant warns him, more than once, as he takes the tightly-rolled scroll from Jiho’s hand. As if Jiho were not aware of what he’s doing, and how closely he treads to the edges of the king’s favor granted by their familial relation. Perhaps he would be more careful if Jaehyo, too, had not disappeared from court life as quickly as he had entered it, though his disappearance is far less suspicious than Jiho’s. Perhaps he would be more careful if there were not a palpable thread of connection between Jaehyo’s words and Jiho’s fingers, if his heart didn’t speed when his attendant returned with a new letter.

 

Instead, what he writes becomes more and more personal as the days pass and the awkward, formal tone of the first letters bleeds into something more flirtatious, bolder. Jiho knows he shouldn’t be doing this, shouldn’t respond to the bite of the words behind the ink, the way they ask for something a little on the edge of dangerous, but he cannot find it within himself to stop. The more that Jaehyo writes back to him, the more the ache under his heart grows. He wants to see Jaehyo in person, wants him across the table as the sun rises or tucked up under his arm, or just within hands reach, if only for an hour. 

 

So one night, when the dark of the early hours begins to bleed into the soft, dove grey of dawn, he draws his brush into the characters that he’s wanted to write since that first day. 

 

_I know that this is forward of me to ask, despite our many letters, but I wonder if you would do me the honor of visiting me one morning in the coming week. I will not ask you to sing, but merely watch the rise of the sun with me._

 

—

 

It’s not as easy as he wants it to be. Less than a month after their correspondence begins, two days before they’re set to meet, a letter comes from his older brother, foreboding words scrawled hastily across the thick paper. 

 

_Father is sick and we do not have much time before he passes. Mother requests that you return home as soon as possible._

 

Jiho barely has the presence of mind to quickly write out a letter to Jaehyo, explaining his confusion and dread, before a million other tasks come to the fore and he has no time, even for sleep. 

 

In the rush of preparation for his departure, Jaehyo’s returning letter is nearly lost. His attendant only hands him the scroll when they’ve packed everything necessary onto a cart and Jiho has mounted his horse. 

 

It’s only been one day. It’s possible that Jiho could wait one more and have his morning with Jaehyo, but they have no time to spare. His brother rarely writes to him, and is never dramatic. If he says they have little time, they have possibly less. 

 

Jiho unrolls the paper as the horse trots forward, led by a groom. The words are hastily written as well and smudged against the back of the paper, as if Jaehyo had forgotten to dry the ink with sand before he sent it off, rushed as he was. 

 

_I’m sorry to hear about your father and of your abrupt departure. Do not worry about our plans. There are many mornings yet to come that we may spend together, and only one father that you can lose. If you need me, I am always here._

 

In the light of the morning sun, he takes the words for a temporary replacement for Jaehyo, just this once.

 

They’ll meet soon, he knows.

 

—

 

His father, though, is very ill. He is barely conscious by the time that Jiho makes it back to the family home days later. None of the doctors can do much more than stifle the pain that’s crippling him, and as much as Jiho wants to rage against them at the unfairness of it all, he has no energy for it. 

 

Grief shutters his emotions when his father passes only a few days later. It’s impossible for him to eat or sleep, despite he and his father’s tenuous relationship for years before.

 

He tries to think of what to write to Jaehyo, how to share his burden, but the words won’t come for weeks yet. They seem locked away inside of him, wherever his tears have decided to hide as well. When they do come, it is as though a dam has broken and he spends hours writing, half-blind with a grief he hasn’t allowed himself to feel unless he can share it with Jaehyo.

 

Jaehyo writes back almost immediately, the familiar curls of his handwriting an incomparable balm. Now, more than ever, does Jiho wish they had the chance to meet in person. Just the memory of Jaehyo’s voice so close or the touch of his hand, might be enough to soothe the ache in his heart that seems fathomless in the wake of his father’s death. 

 

The only way he can get through it is the idea that soon, he’ll return to Hanyang, to those hastily-abandoned rooms. Soon, he’ll return to Jaehyo. 

 

But the details of his father’s death take longer than he thinks to resolve. Debts, some impossibly large, become clear when Jiho and his brother begin to dig through their father’s papers. Debt collectors come by the family home, aware of their loss but more afraid of the default on the loans.

 

Jiho is forced to put off his return to Hanyang indefinitely. 

 

Jaehyo, when he responds, is sympathetic. _Do not worry,_ he writes, the characters shaken with something that Jiho hopes is disappointment, or even grief, something similar to the heavy feeling in his own heart. _I will be here when you return, and the sun continues to rise every morning._

 

Under the words there lies an echo of Jiho’s own thoughts, _there is still time._

 

Even pooling the family’s resources, it becomes clear something more has to be done to clear the debts. His mother writes to her wealthy friends and extended family, announcing the intention of her sons to marry. She sells some of her jewelry, trinkets their father brought back from his trips to Ming and the mountains beyond. He can’t tell if she’s sad to lose them or glad to be rid of the memories attached, and the disappointment his father’s name brings up now. 

 

Jiho marries in the summer of the next year, to a girl from a wealthy family in a southern province. She’s smart and leads their family from the background, keeping things running while Jiho tries to focus on his work. She and Jiho’s mother become good friends, close despite their age difference, closer than even Jiho is with her.

 

Jiho loves her, in a vague way that isn’t entirely duty, but isn’t much of anything else. Letters between him and Jaehyo lessen as time passes, as they must. Jaehyo congratulates him on his marriage in a short letter that Jiho crumples in his hands when he reads it for the first time, heart caught up in something close to grief that he can’t explain. He wishes for something he can’t put to words, for time that he doesn’t have, or a life that he no longer leads.

 

Jaehyo tells him that he’s left the capitol, gone back to his home near the southern sea. It takes longer and longer for their letters to reach each other, though the half-ache, half-excitement that pulls at Jiho’s heart every time his attendant appears at the door to his study with a familiar scroll of paper, never quite fades. 

 

Jiho has a ‘happy life,’ though he always feels as though there’s something missing. He and his wife have a daughter, then a son. Jiho teaches them both their characters, aware he’s not supposed to teach his daughter anything but unable to deny her pleading face. 

 

He hires a music tutor for them both, and his daughter develops a beautiful voice. He tries to enjoy it but there is a bitterness it unlocks in him, despite her sweet tone. Each day, at the hour that she practices, Jiho leaves for long walks into the mountains that encircle the house, sometimes not returning until the sun has long set. His wife never asks about the strange, long absences, only turns her face away when he returns, as if she knows. 

 

Sometimes he wakes inexplicably in the night, wishing he could cross the country to Jaehyo’s side. He has an overwhelming desire to cross over the mountains until the southern sea rises into view; that odd, blue expanse fading into a shore he has never seen. 

 

He dreams of the house Jaehyo has, with its sloping roof and the rooster that Jaehyo laughingly writes as being the bane of his sleeping schedule. He’ll push open the door of the yard and step over the wooden threshold, dawn fading the dark edges of the wood and making the dew on the patterned roof tiles glow. And standing in the doorway, robes slipping down his shoulders, is— the dream stutters and falls apart there, as always.

 

Perhaps Jaehyo has changed in the years between, has lost his voice, but he will never know. 

 

— ONE

 

Years seem to pass between them in the mess of sleep. Centuries slip by, one right after another, winter snows blanketing each new year, letting the soft moonlight hide time’s fingers digging into the landscape. 

 

They don’t notice it like that, as it is, the inescapable degrade.

 

Whatever souls linger on the Earth longer than they should— those fair few ghosts still holding to the fallow earth, needing the feel of the pine boughs underfoot, the sharp smell of rain into a swollen creek, the cry of cities waking, those hearts still tied to the carnal beat of the world around them, or the wisp of each other— they have overstayed. 

 

They grow weak as the nights cycle on. They are clinging where they should not be. They are holding onto those things, those words, those betrayals, those fellow hearts, when they should not. They should go on, but they know nothing else, now.

 

He doesn’t notice it like that. His name changes with the rise and fall of the season’s breath. Transience doesn’t become him, doesn’t become anyone, but nor does it seem to degrade him, not like the others. He doesn’t even remember why he’s here, why he’s still holding on. 

 

In between those slips of life, he doesn’t know where he goes, except into the dark. He doesn’t remember more. He doesn’t know who controls these things, when he wakes into life and when he disappears into a sleep like death, if these things can even be controlled. 

 

Maybe they’re all just dreams and he’s just lost in them.

 

Sometimes, an exhaustion he could have only collected over a hundred lifetimes pins him. For a moment he seems to recognize the days he’s risen for, and it weighs too much. Then he shakes his head, blinks, and all he can see is this one life. 

 

In truth, he’s forgotten that he’s waiting. 

 

— 

 

That guy— Ahn Jaehyo, Jiho learns— is, in fact, added to their little group. It’s been faltering ever since Minho had been forced to drop out and Jiseok had switched companies; it’s just him and Kyung and Kim Yukwon, and Jiho doesn’t know how to feel. 

 

Jiho doesn’t like him— hates the way his stomach drops when Jaehyo looks over at him, the way he feels himself tense up for a fight whenever Jaehyo smiles at someone else, the way Jiho has to waddle to the bathroom in the middle of the night when his thoughts won’t stop buzzing in his head and he can hear Jaehyo’s sleepy breaths from across the room and his exhausted brain wonders what it would be like to curl up next to him, have those long, hot fingers slip down his shorts and suddenly he’s hard and there are six guys in a room with him and no room to jerk off in peace. 

 

Jiho has gotten really bored of seeing the tiled walls of the bathroom at 3AM, but he can’t sleep, either. He has odd dreams that break up his exhaustion but splinter in the faded light of the dawn, until they’re broken down past comprehension. So many mornings, he wakes up feeling as though he’s been running the whole night, that he’s traveled through cities hot with ash or climbed up mountains as rain splatters down between the winter-bare branches, always going towards someone, or running away from a voice, but never able to rest.

 

They’re all tired, all the growing collection that will one day be Blockbuster, but he seems to be the only one who has trouble falling asleep.

 

He antagonizes Jaehyo, he knows. But Jaehyo gives back as good as he gets, those wide eyes narrowing to slits every time he sees Kyung and Jiho laughing in a corner together, as if he knows it’s about him. And Jiho watches for those signs, feels electricity lance down his spine and heat spread over his chest when Jaehyo clenches his jaw or lets those dark eyes flash. What a pale substitute for desire, anger is, but it’s all Jiho will allow himself. 

 

There are things he wants, and things he knows he can allow himself, and he knows where the thin line is drawn for idols. He knows where he’s drawn the line for himself, steps further back than anyone, because he knows himself. He knows his mind. If he lets himself get one thing he wants, he won’t stop before he’s gotten the rest and there’s not enough leeway in this life for the choices he wants to make, the people he wants, not for anyone in their country. 

 

He won’t get caught up in these little things, not when there are six other guys looking at him, calling him _‘Leader’_ and knowing he can’t fail them, not for something like this. He can’t let himself, not when there’s this much at stake.

 

At night, Jiho curls around that hot flicker of anger in his heart, knowing it’s already beginning to twist into something else, something softer, and presses his fingertips to his chest, telling himself, _Not in this life._ He falls asleep to the words circling around his mind, a mantra that has lost all meaning in repetition. 

 

_Not in this life. Not now._

[   
](http://thenewlondoner.livejournal.com/10412.html)

 

 


	4. QUATERNARY

 

 

_—_ QUATERNARY

 

He is hiding somewhere quite small, cramped. It smells strongly of wheat gone bad, too damp, and the wooden corners cannot contain him comfortably. The box digs into his knees and against the curved knobs of his spine, compressing his chest until it’s painful to breathe.

 

It’s his breath, he thinks, that gives them direction to him— it’s too loud in the cramped space and they can hear it from outside.

 

When they pull open the lid of the grain box, for a moment he tries to curl further into it, instinctively, uselessly. But they grab his legs and arms and there must be a couple of them, must be Army in the way that they grab ruthlessly at his skin and dump him to the hard, dirt floor. 

 

Jiho scrabbles to his feet, wondering if he can run past the soldiers and to the freedom and danger of the fields beyond, but there are three of them there, in their heavy black boots and muddy canvas pants, olive green under probably weeks worth of fighting grime. 

 

There are probably more soldiers outside, too, waiting in the thick mud that rims the snow-covered fields, pissing or laughing or rounding up even more “commie spies” hidden in this sleepy, small town. Jiho wants to throw up at the sight of the heavy guns slung over their shoulders, though none are even pointed at him. 

 

They are all foreigners, the closest one a short blonde with blue eyes that are startlingly clear in a dirt-smudged face. 

 

The soldier says something—in English probably—to Jiho, but Jiho just shakes his head.

 

“No,” he pleads, throat dry. He doesn’t know if it’s the cold of the winter day or the fear that makes his hands shake. “No, please, no,“ he says, the only words he knows in English. 

 

The blonde turns to the thickly-bearded one on his right, whose dark eyes seem bored into his face. He narrows his eyes at Jiho, distrust clear across his features. Jiho remembers that the last time he heard those words spoken in English, the soldier hadn’t listened to the girl who had screamed them. Fear sharpens over his skin like a current. 

 

“No, no,” Jiho repeats, holding up his hands. He hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks, and his fingers have grown thin and the skin rough in the winter cold. 

 

The blonde one grabs at Jiho’s wrists and drags him forward. Fear hitches high in Jiho’s throat and his feet can barely find traction on the muddy ground as they pull him from the room. Outside, midday sunlight glints off fields of fresh-fallen snow and the air is sharp. After hours in that small box, the world is too bright. 

 

Jiho’s threadbare clothes are no match for the cold and he can already feel himself shivering as the soldier drags him by the scruff of the neck through the courtyard and out into the street. Villagers gather, close and curious, down the road. No one steps forward to them when Jiho is thrown to the ground.

 

The soldier yells something in English at them, and no one reacts. They all just stare. He switches to gruff, heavily accented Korean.

 

“Do you know him? Anyone know this scoundrel?” He uses a terrible word, but Jiho doesn’t care. The thought that he might understand— he crawls up on his knees and starts to plead in Korean. 

 

The soldier ignores him. “No one?”

 

Jiho tries to calm down and speak more clearly, though fear tries to stop his mind. He hasn’t done anything wrong. “I’m not from here. I’m from a village nearby. I came— I came because there was no food, and I was trying to find some here. I’m not a spy. I’m just—”

 

The kick catches Jiho on the chin and sends him flying backwards. Pain explodes upwards into the top of his head and blackens his vision for a moment. He lands, hard, into a gutter of muddy, melted snow. Weakly, he tries to sit up, but the world tilts around him and he wants to throw up.

 

No one is saying anything. Dimly, he recognizes the word ‘kill’ from the soldier’s lips, and shakes his head, feeling blood drip from the corner of his mouth. He thinks he’s bitten his tongue. Pain makes the words slip from his mind.

 

Hands, rough but warm, press in on either side of his face. He blinks through the pain, until figures begin to form. 

 

A man, with grey at the temples of his black hair, a Korean man, is looking at him. His face is lined with dirt that seems at odds with his kind bearing and the pads of his fingers are pressing across Jiho’s face. 

 

“Are you alright?” Jaehyo asks, in Korean. There’s the slightest hint of Satoori in his voice.

 

Jiho’s throat is so dry. “It hurts.”

 

A smile cracks at the edge of Jaehyo’s lips but is quickly masked. He’s wearing a uniform just like the other soldiers, though it doesn’t fit him as well as it does them. “You just got kicked in the head,” he says, quietly. “I’m not surprised.”

 

The soldier says something, and Jaehyo turns and says something in English, quickly, over his shoulder. He turns back, face tense with something close to worry, though his voice is professional. 

 

“Are you from here?” he asks. 

 

“Yes,” Jiho whispers. 

 

Something twists at the corner of Jaehyo’s mouth. “What’s the name of the village?” 

 

Jiho’s head is hurting so badly he can’t concentrate. He can’t think of any names, not even where he is right now. 

 

“It’s near?” Jaehyo prompts, his hands tightening over Jiho’s face and then dropping away. The loss of touch makes Jiho’s stomach swoop, like he’s lost an anchor and is floating away. Sickness rises in his throat.

 

“G-gyeongju,” he says, the only place he can think of that’s far enough south not to be suspicious. 

 

“Are you affiliated with any army?” Jaehyo asks, that trace of Satoori accent in his voice again, as if a reminder. 

 

Jiho’s mouth shuts and he shakes his head, ‘no.’ “I swear I’m not,” he says in a low voice, too low for the soldiers overhead to hear what he’s saying. “I’m just hungry.”

 

Jaehyo looks at him for long seconds, as if assessing him. Jiho wonders if he looks trustworthy, his winter-roughened face, chapped lips, thin hands. If he doesn’t— death is just one option. 

 

It’s almost as if Jaehyo recognizes him, too, for a moment, before he hauls Jiho up by his forearms. He leans in close, mouth brushing against Jiho’s ear. Jiho can’t tell if it’s excitement or relief that travels down his spine, a shock, when Jaehyo whispers, “Just trust me. And don’t speak.”

 

—

 

They take Jiho to the UN encampment nearby. When they heave Jiho up into the back of the army-issue personnel carrier, he nearly balks. He knows that there were cars in Seoul, and trams, and other new things he has no name for, but he’s never ridden in one before. 

 

Jaehyo, though, just grabs him by the arm and pulls him up beside him. They tied Jiho’s wrists together, though he has no intention or thoughts of escape. He falls into the seat next to Jaehyo and presses his thin knee to the canvas of his army uniform, the slight warmth that escapes calming him. Something tells him to stay close to Jaehyo, as though the army interpreter will be able to help him, keep him safe. The idea is almost hilarious when compared to the absolute chaos war has wrought during the past year.

 

The burly man with the beard hops in the back of the truck and sits down across from them. Though he leans forward and braces his hands on his knees calmly enough, something in his expression is still dangerous. The anchor of Jaehyo’s body seems less, almost insignificant, against his presence. The blonde jumps into the front of the jeep and indicates to the driver to go. 

 

Jaehyo and the man talk quietly in English as Jiho watches the village disappear into the brightness of the snow, the white fields soon obscured by dark trees. Whatever illusion of safety he had has been left behind, and all he has is the man next to him and the warmth from where they’re pressed together from knee to hip. 

 

—

 

The camp is small, obviously temporary, though the fighting has already been going on for months. There are a few tents set up in a ramshackle line through the trees, hastily constructed, though the thick mud that seals them to the ground seems weeks, if not months, old. As they wander along the line, deeper into the woods, the soldiers duck off into their various sagging tents until it’s only Jaehyo, Jiho, and the thickly bearded soldier who pulls Jiho forward by his wrists. 

 

Jaehyo looks like he wants to protest, but can’t find the words. He puts a hand on Jiho’s shoulder as they head towards a large tent propped up under dark green camouflage. As Jiho is led up to a tree right before the entrance, he notes the names scrawled in dark marker near the entrance. 

 

They’re in English, but Jiho understands, suddenly, why it’s only the three of them left. 

 

Jiho looks over at Jaehyo, but he’s not looking back at him. His heart drops, like he’s tripped over something unexpectedly. For a moment, he wonders if maybe he shouldn’t have trusted Jaehyo. 

 

The soldier makes Jiho kneel next to the tree and pulls his arms behind it, securing it with a long length of rope. Already, the position makes his shoulders burn and his fingers curl, trying to drag the stretch away. 

 

Jaehyo stands in front not Jiho now, his expression impassive. There’s a nervous energy in him, though his eyes flicker to his companion and back to Jiho’s eyes. There’s something in him that Jiho wants, that impassive face that Jiho wants to break for all the warmth hiding underneath. 

 

But it’s that wanting that got him kicked out of Seoul, running for his life from the soldiers who roamed the streets at night sometimes, hungry and watching. It’s dangerous, and Jaehyo is keeping him still him with that intent gaze, something more promised in his gaze.

 

A smile, secretive, curls the corner of Jaehyo’s mouth. Instinctively, the wanting pulls Jiho forward until he nearly strains against the rope now tied tightly around his wrists. 

 

The soldier tightens Jiho’s cuffs with a yank that snaps Jiho’s head back against the tree. Irritation buzzes up his spine and over the arch of his skull, and he can’t stop the glare as the soldier rounds the tree. 

 

He catches Jiho’s dark look and mutters something rude in English, a word that Jiho doesn’t know, before kicking at Jiho’s legs with a sharp foot. Jaehyo’s face is blank as he says something. The soldier just snorts in a dismissive way. 

 

As the soldier wraps an arm around Jaehyo, steering him away, a flash of anger— of jealousy— churns Jiho’s stomach. His arms strain at the ropes holding his wrists together when the soldier’s hand slips from Jaehyo’s shoulder until it’s wrapped around the nape of Jaehyo’s neck, at the collar, like he’s holding a dog in place. Jaehyo’s head tilts down slightly, as if gone limp, as if in submission, and he doesn’t look back as the soldier leads him away. 

 

Jiho’s heart strains hotly, beating triple time. He wants to protect Jaehyo, to pull him away from the soldier wrapped around him, but there’s nothing he can do. 

 

Jaehyo said to trust him. That will have to be enough.

 

— 

 

Darkness falls in a gradual slip from a short, grey afternoon into a suddenly sharp night. Jiho’s shivering has long ago become constant and he’s slipped from a crouch into a seat on the frozen ground. No one comes by with food, though he can smell the slight scent of it in the air, and eventually the hunger settles into the general ache of his body. Everyone seems to have forgotten him. 

 

Occasionally, soldiers will walk by, but they give him very little recognition. Jaehyo and his soldier companion do not return for hours, until darkness has fully settled and the cold is so sharp to have taken the feeling from Jiho’s hands and feet. 

 

They seem drunk at first, propping each other up as they traipse their way over to the tent. Jiho starts up but there’s no energy left in his limbs, and he falls back with a nearly inaudible groan. 

 

The soldier ducks into the tent first, cheeks ruddy with drink, and Jaehyo goes in after. He looks like he’s forgotten all about Jiho, but the moment before he goes into the tent, his eyes flicker over to Jiho’s form. Then he’s gone. 

 

There are muffled sounds in the tent, low words in English and the occasional spurt of something sharper, a command or something Jiho can’t discern. An odd sense of understanding makes a shock spread over the crown of his head and down his spine. He shifts in sudden discomfort, breath making small puffs of silvery water vapor in front of his nose. He hopes he’s wrong, he hopes— 

 

The familiar groans and gasps of sex filter through the walls of the tent. They’re muted, but unmistakeable. Jiho’s heart pulses hotly in his chest, an angry jealousy filling him, sharp against the cold of the air and his limbs. The idea of that soldier, dark gaze and heavy hands, touching Jaehyo’s bare skin, putting his cruel mouth down the slope of Jaehyo’s stomach and causing that low groan that Jiho can tell is Jaehyo’s— Jiho pulls uselessly at his restraints again, chained in frustration. He can’t help but hear. Something is unsettled in him. Jaehyo shouldn’t— 

 

But the reality is that Jaehyo owes him nothing, and it’s entirely possible that Jaehyo has already forgotten him, and the promise.

 

Jiho curls up until his head is between his knees and he can block out some of the sounds. Some still make it through, and he can tell when Jaehyo gasps— soft, and then a long, low groan that goes straight to Jiho’s dick. Heat gathers between Jiho’s thighs, a hot, shameful reaction to those soft moans. He groans into the press of his thighs, ready to scream in frustration. 

 

The darkness deepens and the cold becomes so biting that every breath Jiho takes in burns at his lungs. Soon the area falls quiet, with only the soft susurration of the woods in the background. The heat in his groin flattens out, dissipates into the general cold of his body. Jiho relaxes, still not entirely at ease, but until he can rest his head on his knees. An  hour must pass. He’s barely drifting in sleep when footsteps break the silence. 

 

Slowly, Jiho raises his head. Jaehyo is picking his way quietly towards him. He’s fully dressed, but there’s something still disheveled about him, his lips too dark— cheeks too pink, even for the cold air. 

 

Jiho stares at him, almost too weak to speak. Relief slips warmly into his stomach. _He hasn’t forgotten me._

 

Jaehyo kneels down in front of him, and puts his hands on Jiho’s sharply-featured face. Jiho flinches back instinctively, but the grip is warm, almost hot, when he leans back into it. 

 

Jaehyo’s eyes are an almost liquid black in the slight winter moon. He smells, so close, of himself and the sweat-heavy scent of recent sex. The way Jaehyo is looking at him, Jiho finds the jealousy loosen its vise grip on his heart. 

 

Something of that secretive smile presses back onto Jaehyo’s lips, and Jiho stares at it hungrily, feeling like he could burst through the ropes by wanting. Jaehyo’s eyes flash in recognition and then he’s crawling behind Jiho, pulling the tightly wrapped ropes from Jiho’s wrists. There’s the cold touch of a knife at his wrist and Jiho holds himself still, waiting. Jaehyo cuts through the ropes with relative ease and then he’s back in front of Jiho, hoisting him up with one arm. 

 

After hours crouched on the frozen ground, Jiho can’t even stand on his own. He can’t feel his own feet, or anywhere below his waist or lower than his elbows. Jaehyo wraps an arm around Jiho’s waist and pulls Jiho’s arm over his shoulder, until their sides are pressed together, Jiho’s cold body pressed up against the warmth of Jaehyo’s torso. There’s still that thrill under his skin at being pressed up against Jaehyo’s side that even the cold air can’t take from him. 

 

Jaehyo leads him off into the darkness at the edge of camp, into the slight protection of the trees gone bare in winter. Jiho regains his feet, slowly, the ache under his skin now too far subsumed under the cold of the air for him to feel it. 

 

“Where are we going?” he whispers, but Jaehyo just shakes his head and Jiho takes the cue to go silent.

 

Jaehyo takes him deep into the snow-laden woods, until the lights of the UN encampment have faded into the trees. Jaehyo is silent at his side, eyes focused on a far-off point that Jiho can’t parse through the wavering darkness. Occasionally, Jaehyo will look over with those dark eyes, and a flame of desire will lick down Jiho’s spine as though the depths of the winter cold have receded the tiniest bit. 

 

They come to a stop at the far edge of a field. Moonlight glints off the snow and sets the small farmhouse in the middle of the expanse into shadow. Jaehyo turns to look at him, something resolved in his gaze.

 

_He’s going to stay_ , Jiho knows. The thought doesn’t bother him as much as it should. 

 

“This is as far as I go,” Jaehyo says, voice barely above a whisper. But he doesn’t let go of Jiho, not yet, his gloved hands dug into Jiho’s sides. “Follow the wood. Don’t go high into the mountains; we always seem to find refugees and spies hiding in the mountains. Go to Busan. There will be so many people that you can blend in. You’ll be safe in a big city.” He pauses, as if preparing to let go, and Jiho clutches a little closer. The touch seems to shake Jaehyo’s resolve loose. His eyes flicker down and he licks at his lips, as if nervous. “My mother— she can take care of you, if you tell her that you know me.” 

 

He pauses again, and the darkness seems to set in deep into the lines under his eyes and around his mouth. Jiho wants to kiss him, that glimmering plush of his lip, and there’s no one around to see them, not now. 

 

So he presses his lips up against Jaehyo’s, soft, and Jaehyo leans into him, hands in his rough army gloves curling around the nape of Jiho’s neck. It starts soft, more of a thank you, or a goodbye, until Jaehyo opens his mouth to Jiho and turns the kiss slick and warm, enticing them to press the lengths of their bodies together.

 

Jiho gasps, taken by the warmth and sudden heat of it. Up close, Jaehyo smells of sex, that scent of another human’s touch on his skin and Jiho is urgent to erase it, replace it with his own. Jaehyo urges him on with his hands and mouth, pulling at Jiho’s clothes and moaning when Jiho finally slips a hand past the badly-worn leather of Jaehyo’s uniform belt. 

 

Jaehyo’s skin is burning hot under Jiho’s hands, still sticky with sweat. But he’s already hard and the thought charges through Jiho’s own excitement, the thought that Jaehyo must have been anticipating this, thinking of him even as they trudged through the woods together.

 

Jaehyo pushes him up against a tree, tripping slightly across the hardened snow and then crashing full-bodily into him. It’s hard to focus on Jaehyo, but hard to focus on anything else, with Jiho’s heartbeat pounding loudly in his ears and under his skin. They might get caught, there’s no guarantee that this way is perfectly safe, but Jaehyo is still biting at his lips and his hands fit around the hard length of Jiho and there’s nothing else Jiho can focus on but this. 

 

He comes silently a minute later, shuddering against Jaehyo and his face pressed into his warm neck to muffle any sounds. Jaehyo presses against him more urgently then, tipping his head to fit their mouths together, sloppily, too close to do anything else. 

 

Jiho kisses him with all the tenderness he has left in him, heat under his skin, thinking through the haze, _I wish this wasn’t the end— I wish we had more time for this, without his lover, just us—_ but then Jaehyo is coming in his hands, slumping against him for a brief moment that fills Jiho with a sharp sense of pride, as if he’s made Jaehyo forget about his lover, and they’re the only two in this quiet night who have any right to be together. Jiho nuzzles his cold nose against the warmth of Jaehyo’s cheek, slipping his lips across the skin. 

 

After a few moments slumped together, Jaehyo’s breath spreading wetly over his neck and his fingertips stroking the thin skin at Jiho’s hips, Jaehyo pulls himself up. 

 

Feeling slightly untethered, Jiho straightens as well. The sense of security he felt before is fading now. The sharp smell of the snow breaks through the slight, sluggish warmth of his orgasm. 

 

Jaehyo pulls away and reaches down to scoop up some snow, cleaning off his hands. He belts his uniform again and pulls his coat close around him before he looks back up at Jiho. He looks suddenly exhausted, and Jiho can’t bring himself to ask him for anything else. He cleans off his hands as well and adjusts his clothes, aware of how little the cold affects him now but his fingers still tremble with something else, some inner fear. 

 

When he’s done, Jaehyo pulls him in by his elbow. His eyes flicker over his face for a moment before he pulls something from his pocket and fits it into Jiho’s hand. 

 

It’s an old wooden name tag, like the one his ancestors used during the Joseon dynasty. It’s round and darkened with time, the name carved into it beginning to fade away. 

 

“I can’t take this,” Jiho protests, trying to shove it back into Jaehyo’s hand, but Jaehyo refuses. It must be his grandfather’s, or from a relative even further back, and Jiho grasps at Jaehyo’s sleeve, trying to pull it back up so he can return it but Jaehyo shakes his head. 

 

“No, no, you need it,” Jaehyo says, his fingers tightening around Jiho’s arm. His voice is low, and torn. “Bring it to my mother, in Busan. She’ll… she’ll want it back.”

 

Unease slips up Jiho’s spine at the words. “Then you bring it back to her; bring it to her when the war is over.” He grabs at Jaehyo’s arm but Jaehyo just reaches around him and pulls him tightly to his chest for a moment. 

 

When he pulls back, his dark eyes are sad, as if he’s seeing something beyond Jiho, a future that hasn’t come to fruition yet. His breath is warm over Jiho’s face. “Bring it to her, please, for me.” His gaze focus in on Jiho’s eyes again, and he smiles. 

 

Jiho wants to tell him not to be stupid, that he’ll make it back at the end of the war, loping down the muddy streets where he grew up, ducking into the warm house that’s gone ramshackle with time. His old mother will still be at the fire, making _doenjang_ stew for herself, and at first she won’t believe her eyes, that her son who joined the invading forces to keep her safe, her quiet, kind, elementary school teacher son who never married, has come back to her, whole and alive and there, kissing her on the cheek like he used to do every day after school. But it’s not something he can promise, and Jaehyo leans in and kisses him instead, once more for luck, before pulling back. 

 

“Go,” he says, and Jiho can still smell Jaehyo on him when he takes a deep breath. “Tell her I’ll see her soon,” he continues, but the smile that curls his face barely covers his disbelief. 

 

Jiho nods, fingers curling tightly over the identification tile. It’s still warm from Jaehyo’s inner pocket. He wants to say something but he can’t think of any words. 

 

_Come with me._

 

“I’ll see you soon,” he manages, unable to believe it, hating it when the words make the corners of Jaehyo’s smile tremble slightly. 

 

He turns and heads off into the snow. His heart aches, already, as if he’s doing something wrong. When he turns back to look at the woods, Jaehyo is gone.

 

_Let us have another life together, after the war._

 

—

 

Jiho slips into Busan a few weeks later. The snow has thinned considerably, but the cold is still sharp. The city is full of UN troops and teeming with refugees who arrive daily in huge numbers. It’s easy to get lost in the crowd entering the city and he finds the old quarter listed on the identification tile. 

 

It’s quieter here, slightly, not too close to the port where huge battleships and supply carriers dock and unload, load, every hour of the day and night. At the end of a sloping street, he finds the old house of Jaehyo’s mother, once grand but gone dilapidated with age.

 

An old lady welcomes him in at the sight of the ID tile, the tears drying when Jiho explains that Jaehyo hasn’t died but has saved his life. He doesn’t know if the first is true, but the latter outweighs his fear. The lady presses it back into his hands when Jiho tries to leave, his duty done, and urges him to stay. 

 

She keeps him there for a few months, before the fighting changes direction and the UN forces start to push up past the 38th parallel and into North Korean territory. The possibility of Seoul being open again draws him north. He thanks Jaehyo’s mother for her kindness and promises to send her word when he makes it home, the tile worn around his neck on a long string. 

 

Jiho makes it to Seoul while the city is still under UN command, but soon afterwards there’s a sudden reversal of fighting and he’s caught by a random patrol of Chinese and North Korean soldiers on the outskirts of the city. He’s killed that day, a few hours after being captured, and his body is buried in the woods, the ID tile folded carefully into an inner pocket, next to his cool skin.

 

— ONE

 

There are months of this. In the daytime he grits his teeth and practices dance moves that pull his hip flexors and spread aches down his spine, never complaining. He sees his cheeks go from convex to a barely-articulated slope, covered in sweat and various shades of makeup. He looks his age, then younger, then 30. He eats endless bowls of _ramyun_ , beef _kimbap_ from the restaurant down the street that’s the only one open all night, coffee bread from the convenience store, and nothing else for almost six months. He sleeps in a pre-debut dorm with the 6 other boys who can’t seem to keep a bathroom clean and almost never sees a hot shower, because they always go in age order (he thinks Kyung does it on purpose, sometimes). He goes to diction lessons and gym sessions and gets his teeth bleached and his hair cut and he stops being able to recognize himself in the mirror, before he becomes too tired to care. 

 

Dealing with Jaehyo should be easier as time passes, but the tension that has stretched between them since their first meeting occasionally winds tighter, gritting teeth and muttering words, but it never snaps. Someone always comes in the middle, urging peace or making a joke, and Jiho feels like a wounded cat when he turns and leaves, and just as impotent. 

 

His shoulders are always heavy with unbroken tension that presses down to curl in his groin, an accusing arousal that deepens the longer they know each other. That simmering annoyance marks the underside of his skin like prickling knives, and Jaehyo’s eyes seem reproachful. 

 

_You know me. You know this._

 

The urge to kiss him doesn’t fade with time, not like Jiho thought it would. He never follows through. 

 

_Do something._

 

But as much as Jiho can’t shake the feeling that he knows Jaehyo— from before, somewhere that Jiho can’t place, a recurring dream that he can’t quite remember— the words won’t form. He _wants_ , and he knows he can’t, a double bind of silence. 

 

Jiho’s losing energy that he can’t spare just to keep this pseudo-anger in place of something else. He doesn’t hold grudges, as a person, and now he knows why. So he tries to make Jaehyo happy, or at least something a little less like in hate, or whatever this has become. 

 

Everyone else can make Jaehyo laugh, can make those broad shoulders bow with an inexhaustible exhilaration and make him slap his leg as he laughs, except Jiho. Even when he tries to make Jaehyo laugh, the words come out wrong, twisted and are followed by silence. Something might curl the corners of Jaehyo’s lips, as if he knows what Jiho is trying to say but can’t let himself react. 

 

It’s not a laugh, but it feels like a shift, even slight, in their relationship. 

 

When they speak, Jaehyo’s eyes always flick away before he responds, lashes covering the dark irises. It’s like he can’t even look Jiho in the face. Every time his eyes turn away, it’s a kick in the gut, an incitement to try harder. 

 

It feels almost like they’re moving towards something as they circle around each other, ratcheted in towards each other with each step and unable to move away, unable to look to even where they’re going. It feels like they’re making progress, though they still hardly speak, and emotions run close the surface when they’re in the same room. 

 

It’s exhausting, this constant pressure. Jaehyo must feel it too, but he smiles just the same and tells the same unfunny jokes and ignores Jiho when he grinds his teeth in annoyance. 

 

—

 

There are nights he can’t sleep that Jiho spends in the studio, remastering tracks that he still can’t get right. When he finally sleeps, passed out on top of the keyboard, those dreams are the most shattered. Destroyed by distance and his exhaustion, he sees Jaehyo from across a small room thick with incense and the close scent of wet silks. Claustrophobia knocks against his heart like a spirit, until the loss of his sister knocks out his feet and sends him to the ground. He can’t take any comfort in the hand against his neck, knowing her husband’s— Jaehyo’s— grief must be worse.

 

_We drove her to this._

 

Guilt makes him abruptly sick, even as his hand reaches up and presses over the one on his nape. It’s a shoddy connection, but all he has when the floor feel like water under his knees.

 

Just as suddenly, the dream dissolves and Jiho is left in sleep so heavy it keeps him facedown on the keyboard until a producer- _nim_ comes in at 9 the next morning. He doesn’t remember anything but has a slight ache in his stomach that food can’t settle. 

 

_—_

 

There are too many of those dreams. More numerous than the times that they find each other are they times when they don’t—or can’t.

 

If eternity is repetition and habits are easy to break but hard to keep, perhaps their failures are their proper endings. Perhaps there is nothing more. It shouldn’t be this hard, and Jiho wakes up with a lingering frustration that he can’t dispel. It’s easier to think he doesn’t have to try for something, that he just has to keep going and it will all fade and work itself out and become every other platitude people have told him about the life he’s chosen ( _this time_ ).

 

It won’t matter that the few times after a performance Jaehyo falls asleep against him in the back of the van, slumped heavily against him, his heart swells and he thinks wildly that it would be worth it, if Jaehyo asked him to give everything up. It might be worth it, if Jaehyo knew.

 

But then he wonders what he would do to keep Jaehyo next to him like this, vulnerable and relaxed, his throat probably sore from singing, so full of his accomplished dream, and he knows. He knows, even as his skin burns with a pleased warmth. He knows and he wants to brush Jaehyo’s hair away from his face, but his fingers are clenched around his knees to keep himself from following through.

 

Instead of looking at Jaehyo, he turns and stares out the window at the passing lights of a sleeping Seoul. His heart thrums under his breastplate, and he tries to ignore it. It could be anyone, leaning up against him. It shouldn’t matter that it’s Jaehyo.

 

To do it, he knows he has to keep quiet on those words he’s beginning to find in the back of his throat. He can’t let the group fail, not for him and not for his selfish desires. He has to find the other words, lyrics and platitudinal answers for interviews and jokes for the fans, his mind whirring and his throat hurting from what he _doesn’t want_ to want to say. 

 

“Let’s be Block B for the rest of our lives!” 

 

He knows it’s what Jaehyo wants to accomplish, his dream of becoming a singer already becoming true, and it sparks life in his eyes. And if it takes the rest of his life, and his silence, he’ll help. 

 

Jiho closes his eyes and tries to sleep, the scent of Jaehyo’s skin so close, knowing. His heart feels heavy in his chest.

 

_Not in this life,_ he reminds himself. 

 

This time, it feels less like protection and more like a punishment.

[ ](http://thenewlondoner.livejournal.com/10662.html)

 

 


	5. QUINARY

 

 

— QUINARY

 

Jiho bursts into the apartment, not bothering to take off his shoes. His heartbeat is thumping erratically in his chest and his throat burns with the effort of five flights of stairs. 

 

“Hyung!” he yells, voice cracking with puberty, but he doesn’t have the capacity to be embarrassed, right now. “Hyung! Are you home?” he yells louder, running through the entryway and into the small living room. It’s empty, his brother’s university textbooks piled in a neat stack on the low table like he’s preparing to sit down and do his homework, but his brother nowhere in sight. 

 

Jiho’s heart hitches in his chest. He runs through the rest of the apartment, calling for his brother, but every room is empty. 

 

Without grabbing his bag, he runs out the door and slams it hastily behind him. He flies down the stairs of the apartment building and out onto the street. It’s emptier than it normally would be at this time, the streets sparse with taxi cars and the buses that usually run on the main road in front of their house. 

 

The lack of busy noise strikes Jiho as eerie, and the hair on his arms starts to rise and the cold air seems like a knife in his chest. He jogs down a side street, cutting through the tightly-packed apartment buildings and low, old-style houses. Fear simmers low in his stomach, like a warning. 

 

“Don’t be stupid,” he mutters to himself as he crosses another large road, the sidewalks less tightly packed with people than they normally are. “I’m just imagining things. He’s fine, of course,” he ducks down an alleyway that connects to the road in front of the provincial office building. “Those guys were just spreading rumors.” 

 

But his conviction fades abruptly when he comes out onto the road and sees the small plaza in front of the provincial office building packed with people. Not just people— students. University students. There have to be more than a thousand of them, and they’re holding up signs and yelling and there are soldiers in front of the building, forming a blockade that Jiho can just barely make out through the crowd. Soldiers ring the edges of the plaza as well, at attention and fully armed. 

 

“No,” Jiho says quietly, in disbelief. He can’t believe the guys in his class were telling the truth. That has to be a first.

 

He starts towards the crowd, searching desperately over the tops of people’s heads for his brother’s face. He’s tall— he should be easy to see, but there’s so many people that Jiho can barely push into the crowd without meeting resistance. 

 

“Hyung!” he yells once, then again, and some of the people next to him look over briefly, but none of them are Jiho’s brother. The crowd is too loud for anyone but those immediately next to him to hear him. 

 

He tries to shove forward, but he’s jostled back. Fear makes his throat tight. People are throwing things at the soldiers, stones probably, and Jiho knows his brother is stupid sometimes, but he’s _safe_ , right? “Hyung!” he tries once more, and this time someone from behind him grabs him around the middle. 

 

They’re bigger than he is, older, probably his brother’s age, and they hoist him up without much effort. Jiho tries to kick them, because they’re dragging him from the protestors and away from where his brother probably is. His captor grunts when one of the kicks connects with his leg, but he just tightens his hold around Jiho’s middle and continues out to where the crowd has thinned at the edge of the plaza. 

 

When he drops Jiho down to his feet, Jiho immediately tries to run back in, but the man grabs his arms. “Hey, stop,” he says, and when Jiho finally looks at him, he recognizes the face, if only vaguely. “I know you,” the man says, and it’s Jaehyo, taller than him, but young. Barely university age. Jiho recognizes him from the times his brother has come home late from university, weak-kneed from _makkeolli_ and skin smelling like cheap cigarettes. His friends crowd the dark entryway to their apartment building, laughing and drunk themselves, faces flickering in the shadows of faraway street lamp as they hand Jiho’s brother over. They’re always gone before Jiho can ask for any of their names, their features swallowed in the night.

 

Jaehyo is strong, despite the thinness of his fingers. He grips Jiho’s arms, as if Jiho is drunk and needs help getting home, and Jiho feels his stomach drop at the sense of control in the touch. “Your brother doesn’t want you here right now. It’s not safe.” He starts to turn Jiho around, as if to send him home, but Jiho struggles free of his grip. 

 

“No!” he turns around and glares at Jaehyo, his heart hammering in his chest. Panic twists his voice. “My brother is in there! I need to go back—”

 

He tries to dash past, into the crowd again, but Jaehyo jumps in front of him, grabs him. His hair flurries around his face, crowding in his dark eyes. Concern is clear on his face, and it stops Jiho. “Hey, yeah, I know, I know— but don’t— don’t worry. He doesn’t want you here, okay?” He puts a hand around Jiho’s arm and starts walking him backwards. “He really doesn’t— it’s too dangerous—“

 

“No, I—“ but then there are screams, real screams, not the loud, somewhat measured chanting of the protestors, but a scream from the edge of the plaza that raises the hair on the back of Jiho’s neck. They freeze. Jiho and Jaehyo both look over to see a clump of soldiers around a man on the ground, surging inwards with sickening intent. Moments later, the soldiers are surrounded by a rush of protestors and disappear from sight. 

 

Jaehyo’s hand tightens around his arm and Jiho can’t even protest as Jaehyo drags him backwards. His eyes track over the growing knot of people, soldiers rushing to support their comrades and protestors pushing in. The tack of the crowd changes in tune, anger clear in their voices, though there are too many to parse out exactly what’s happening.

 

“We need to get out of here,” Jaehyo mutters, and swings Jiho around and starts running with him against the pull of the crowd. The air quickens with a dangerous kind of tension, as in the moments before an explosion. Passerby are starting to look around and move closer in curiosity, and the soldiers that had been scattered lazily around the plaza are starting to come to attention.

 

Jaehyo pulls him down the main road and then turns into the crisscross of alleyways. It’s quieter here, the screams of the crowd fading into the general clamor of the city, but still Jaehyo doesn’t let go of him. 

 

Jiho’s mind spins and he allows Jaehyo to pull him along. He wants to go back but fear blanks out his mind and keeps him going forward in Jaehyo’s grip. They’re almost to his neighborhood by the time Jiho manages to shake himself free.

 

“What’s going _on_?” he manages. He tries to keep his voice steady. All he can see is that man on the floor, surrounded by soldier’s legs. A sickening sense of unease washes over him. They’re far from the square, but he swears he can still hear echoes of the chants, the screams. “Where’s my brother?” 

 

Jaehyo’s lips are pressed tightly together, like he’s afraid but trying to hide it. “He’s fine.”

 

“How do you know?” Jiho tries to pull himself away from Jaehyo’s hands but the unsteadiness in his chest spreads out into his knees and makes his voice shake. Somehow it’s even worse without Jaehyo’s hold. He doesn’t even know why it makes such a difference. He barely knows Jaehyo, but he’s something known in a sea of chaotic thoughts. “Did you see him? Do you know where he is?” 

 

Jaehyo reaches out for him but must read the denial on Jiho’s face, and stops before he can grab him. Awkwardness bows his back slightly, but he stuffs his hands into his pockets and attempts to feign confidence. “He’s there, in the crowd. But he’s fine!” he reassures quickly, when he sees Jiho’s face fall. “You know your brother… he’s smart enough not to do anything crazy. He’ll be fine.” 

 

And this time, Jaehyo’s words aren’t exactly a lie. Jiho looks at the earnest press of Jaehyo’s eyes, follows the slope of his somewhat severe cheek, and then down to the hard-packed dirt of the street. All he can feel are his harsh breaths in, out, in, out again, quickly, against his will; the way the breaths make his heart beat thunder under his ribs like it needs to escape. It’s all too fast. He knows he’s afraid, and suddenly he feels lost in it, alone. An inexplicable and incomprehensible fear blackens his mind like a certainty. _Hyung won’t come home._

 

It seems ironclad, that idea, and it stops Jiho’s breath. Everything else stops as well. He can’t deal with that possibility and the fear it creates. His vision blackens at the edges, pulling in tightly until the packed dirt of the road is subsumed under the panic. 

 

Visions cloud his mind of the crowd growing, surging with perpetual energy that notches up quicker every second that passes. And the soldiers swarming around the edge of the crowd, pressing in with their guns in hand, the threat there, always there, until the energy of the crowd breaks out and swarms outward; and there, in the centre, is Jiho’s brother, passion making his voice louder and his height, his exceptional height that Jiho doesn’t think he’ll ever reach, making his face visible over the other dark heads. It’s his height and his deep voice and the anger that can so easily mar his face that draws the soldiers towards his brother, and they charge at each other, heedless, reckless, and Jiho wants to scream out for him, but— 

 

Someone lightly shakes his shoulder. He looks up and he recognizes Jaehyo’s face through the panic, and for a moment his features slide and shift, pliable as wet sand, as if moved by a deft hand. He looks older, lines drawn around his mouth and at the corners of his eyes; and then he’s young and full-cheeked, beautiful as a woman, face radiating full moon light. Again, Jiho knows him, beyond this moment, beyond the short years he’s lived. 

 

There’s a measure of comfort in his touch, as though he’s done it before, and Jiho can’t help but trust it. He wants to fall into Jaehyo’s arms, wants something to soothe the fear that’s locked an iron rod in his spine, but he’s stuck, tongue pinioned to his palate. 

 

Jaehyo is saying something as he pulls Jiho along, some small words of comfort that Jiho can’t even hear. It doesn’t take them long to cut across the city streets to Jiho’s small apartment building. They’re up the stairs and to the front door of the family flat before Jiho can calm down enough to speak. 

 

Jaehyo pulls the keys to the door from Jiho’s pocket and bundles him inside. Knees weak, Jiho leans up against the wall as Jaehyo slides Jiho’s school loafers off. His long fingers dig into Jiho’s ankles, and the touch helps drag Jiho back into his body.

 

Jiho looks down at him, eyesight wobbling a little. Jaehyo’s eyelashes fan darkly across his cheek. Jiho wants to reach out and touch the soft slope of his skin, wants to slide his fingers into the thick shock of hair swept away from Jaehyo’s temple. The urge is familiar and foreign, seeming to come from a memory that isn’t entirely his. Jaehyo looks up. Embarrassed to be caught staring, even when Jaehyo smiles in reassurance, Jiho looks away. His heart pounds, though no longer entirely with anxiety. 

 

He doesn’t understand. 

 

“Are you okay?” Jaehyo asks, voice soft, standing and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. 

 

Jiho feels tiny and embarrassed next to him. Part of him wants to pull away, but he shakes his head. He wants Jaehyo close for as long as he can keep him.

 

“Okay, okay,” Jaehyo murmurs, and pulls him into the apartment and around to the small, Western-style couch. He makes Jiho sit and carefully lowers himself down next to him. A tense moment passes, and he suddenly stands himself, looking awkward. He folds his hands into each other, as if searching for something to hold onto. “Do… d’you want some tea? Water?” 

 

Jiho looks up at him and really all he wants is for Jaehyo to sit back down with him, keep his arm around Jiho’s shoulders. It’s a long time until his mom gets back from her job, and he doesn’t know how long it’ll be until his brother gets back— _if at all_ , but he shuts that thought right up— and he doesn’t want to be alone. 

 

But it looks as though Jaehyo is getting ready to leave, so Jiho shakes his head again. He pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them in lieu of someone else. 

 

“Well, I’ll just— go,” Jaehyo says, shifting from side to side, before he makes to leave. He pauses once, “It’ll be okay.” Jiho bites the inside of his lip to keep silent. Whatever calm he had before is being overtaken by icy dread but he can’t make himself speak. 

 

He hears Jaehyo’s footsteps trail to the door, and buries his face into his knees. In the enclosed space of his body, his heartbeat throbs, too quickly to be normal. Thoughts flood his mind in an uncontrollable rush and he’s overtaken by images of his dead brother, of the screams of the crowd and the far-off shots of the military-grade ammunition. 

 

He can’t fill his lungs, it’s not possible. Anxiety is going to kill him.

 

A hand on the top of his head startles him, and he looks up to see Jaehyo leaning over the back of the couch, looking concerned. “Do you want me to stay?” he asks, soft, but he doesn’t seem to wait for Jiho to nod before he’s rounding the couch and sitting next to him. He’s careless and the sides of their bodies crush together, the warmth of his body almost making Jiho cry with some primeval form of relief. Just his presence is enough to silence some of the doubts spinning through Jiho’s mind.

 

Before he knows what he’s doing, he’s buried his face into Jaehyo’s chest and wrapped his arms tightly around his skinny chest. Sobs pull at his throat but he swallows them down, embarrassed, and his throat aches with them. Jaehyo curls his body around Jiho’s, cautious at first, and then, as if anticipating Jiho’s need, just enveloping him completely.

 

Jaehyo’s chin presses at the crown of Jiho’s head and his warm, soft breaths flare across the soft skin of his neck. His heartbeat flutters quickly for a moment against Jiho’s ear and then resumes its constant, soothing cadence. He’s murmuring something, quietly, words that Jiho can’t parse out and doesn’t need to, since he knows they will only be for comfort. And Jiho is already calming down in Jaehyo’s arms, his fears not dissipating but becoming less vocal. 

 

Against his will, tears prick at his eyes and dampen the front of Jaehyo’s shirt. Heat flares over Jiho’s cheeks and he wants to pull away, but Jaehyo doesn’t seem to mind the tears at all.

 

His hands slide over Jiho’s back in widening circles. The touch lulls Jiho until his skin is thrumming with just his heartbeat and the warmth of Jaehyo’s embrace has made him sleepy.

 

He doesn’t know when it happens, but he falls asleep there, in Jaehyo’s arms. 

 

— 

 

Hours later, he wakes to the soft light of the restaurant opposite’s neon sign flaring though the living room window. Jaehyo is gone, the weight and warmth of his body replaced by a pillow under Jiho’s head and a blanket spread over his legs. 

 

Jiho panics, shooting up and kicking off the blanket. A cry escapes his mouth before he knows what he’s saying, before he realizes he doesn’t remember his brother’s friend’s name. There’s nothing for him to call. 

 

In the silence, the world blanketed by the half-light, his stomach drops, as if he’s lost something vitally important. 

 

_Wait—_

 

“Hey,” a deep, familiar voice makes him spin around. His heart leaps to his throat even before his eyes can parse out the figure standing at the back of the couch, one hand reaching out for Jiho’s shoulder.

 

“ _Hyung!_ ” Jiho yells, voice catching on that unexpected block in his throat, that loss of memory choking him up. He vaults over the back of the couch and careens into his brother’s arms. Relief glosses over that slight, inarticulated ache in his chest. 

 

His brother crushes him within his arms, hands sliding over Jiho’s back like a balm. It’s nothing like Jaehyo’s touch, nothing in the rough cut of his _hyung_ ’s hands like Jaehyo’s fine, tapering fingers. But the comfort it elicits is heavier, mixing with the relief that his brother is there, alive.

 

“I’m okay,” his brother murmurs, pressing his cheek to the top of Jiho’s head. “I came back.”

 

—

 

Jiho falls asleep next to his brother that night, curled up together on the bed that they share. He’s too tired and relieved to ask of that half-remembered friend, and the heaviness of his sleep buries his questions too far for him to reach the next morning. 

 

As the months pass, the memory of Jaehyo’s face dissipates like a paper submerged under running water, at first just smudging at the fine lines of his jaw and ear, and then lifting out the darkness of his eyes and the fall of his hair. Soon, Jiho barely remembers the few hours they spent together, or the worry that was soothed by that odd, alien sense of intimately knowing someone he had never met before. 

 

It’s a year later when his brother confesses that the reason he returned early from the protest was one of his friends coming and pulling him from the crowd. 

 

“It’s terrible, though,” his brother murmurs, dropping his head against the apartment window. University textbooks are upended around his feet and the beginning of a paper scrawl across a notebook page. Jiho looks up from where he’s scratching out a math problem. His brother’s face is half-shaded in darkness spread by an early summer sun barely set. Unease pools heavy in Jiho’s stomach. 

 

“He died— I lost him in the crowd when he came to get me, and then I was out of the crowd and he wasn’t— he got pulled back in. They started shooting after I left— and—and I didn’t even know. Youngsung only told me today.” Violet shadows bleed across his troubled expression, before his brother covers the lit side of his face with a hand. Empathy is a hot twist of pain in Jiho’s chest, so close to a knife. 

 

The realization that it must have been Jaehyo elicits only a slight twinge of remembrance. “I’m sorry,” is all Jiho can come up with, before he rises and slips his arms around his brother’s broad, shaking shoulders.

 

After Jiho crawls into bed that night, he lies there and tries to recapture the image of that lost face. But in the dark, with ordinary worries and everyday issues to focus on, he can’t concentrate enough. Sleep pulls heavily at him, dragging him away from his thoughts and the vague outline of Jaehyo’s features. The only real thing that lingers is a sense of having known someone, before they, too, disappeared like so many friends and acquaintances. 

 

When Jiho wakes in the morning, it’s to a slight ache in his chest, though he doesn’t remember why.

 

—ONE

 

Maybe they’ve missed each other too many times and that slight red cord that stretches out, twists between them, is beginning to fray with all the moments they’ve lost, all the life that they’ve lived apart. 

 

Maybe there are only so many chances, and they’ve used up every single one.

[ ](http://thenewlondoner.livejournal.com/10867.html)

 

 


	6. ONE (REDUX)

— REDUX

 

Jiho wakes to the van pulling up in front of the dorm, the sound of the doors opening throwing him into wakefulness. Jaehyo stirs on his shoulder, sleepy and his voice heavy with it when he mutters, “Where are we?” 

 

 

He sounds sweet, and Jiho turns to him just as Jaehyo lifts himself away. The faded lights of their neighborhood glimmer lowly through the tinted windows of the van, staining Jaehyo’s hair in layers of silver. Jiho’s heart jumps to his throat, over-eager, as if he’s woken next to a beautiful stranger.

 

 

But he does, he does know him. The unease of the dream still running through him makes his heart stutter like it did when he was younger and trying too hard to sprint like the other boys. And here he is looking at someone he knows and he hasn’t slipped away, not yet; he’s here and Jiho wants him and he can’t let himself forget that, it feels too important. He’s tried too hard to forget this thing in the fear that it will destroy them. But maybe whatever life they’ve built up outside of this, built as it is on a faulty lie, isn’t as important as what’s between them now. 

 

 

It feels too much, and he’s afraid Jaehyo can read it in his face, the way that Jaehyo’s expression flickers with surprise before shutting down. Jiho’s shoulder is still warm from Jaehyo’s body and everyone else has left the car. 

 

 

Jiho swallows past the lump in his throat. “Home,” he replies, quiet. 

 

 

Jiho’s hand is on Jaehyo’s thigh and he wonders when he put it there. Embarrassed, he begins to pull it away but Jaehyo covers it with a hand, his fingers perpetually cool with bad circulation. 

 

 

Excitement sparks through his skin, as if with Jaehyo they complete an electrical circuit. And he wonders what Jaehyo feels, if it’s that same electricity rocketing through his skin or something else— or, or nothing. It seems impossible that Jaehyo could miss this, be left out, aware as he always is of the other members. 

 

 

A smile presses into the corners of Jaehyo’s lips, something private that warms the air between them. Possibilities swim around Jiho’s mind, untethered and nevertheless impossible, encouraged by the softness of Jaehyo’s expression. In the moment, a different tension pulls between them, elastic, not yanking Jiho forward but pulling him slowly, inexorably. 

 

 

He wonders what it would be like to kiss Jaehyo, if he’d know that mouth on his. He wonders if it would make him remember. He wonders if it was always that simple, all along, to quiet the questions that always bother him. Just that simple press of lips.

 

 

His gaze flickers down to Jaehyo’s mouth and he can hear Jaehyo’s breath in the close quarters. _Just to know—_

 

 

Kyung yells something from outside of the van, unintelligible, and then there’s Jihoon’s answering cry that snaps the moment. Jaehyo’s fingers squeeze Jiho’s briefly before he peels himself out of the chair and crawls through the door into the night. Jiho doesn’t follow. For a moment, he slumps back against the seat, overaware of his heartbeat and the lingering scent of Jaehyo’s skin, wondering if he imagined it all.

 

 

The stain of Jaehyo’s lips taunts him.

 

 

_Not this life_ , he reminds himself but the words are weak and, for once, give him no relief. 

 

 

—

 

 

Some things are inexorable.

 

 

And some things are missed by moments.

 

 

It’s not up to him to choose which it is. He shouldn’t even know this much, or anything at all. 

 

 

—

 

 

Jaehyo watches him after that. 

 

 

Jiho knows he’s not supposed to notice it: the way Jaehyo’s eyes track him across the room, the way he’ll look up when Jiho speaks and away when Jiho looks over at him. But his eyes track Jaehyo just the same, close and soft and wary, like he’s afraid to be caught and, at the same time, as if he wants to be. Jiho doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean, this reflection of himself in Jaehyo’s movements. He doesn’t know if he’s supposed to do something about it. 

 

 

Sometimes he just hopes that Jaehyo will do something, will take the decision away from him and kiss him, hold him against a wall and tell him where this is all coming from, set Jiho at ease, but all Jaehyo does is watch him right back, unmoving. And all Jiho feels he can do is wait until it all fades away.

 

 

The dreams, though, seem to come with less intensity after that night, though he had never remembered them before. But it’s weeks of waking without that existential sense of unease that he’s come to carry as an extra burden amongst his other duties, the ones he still carries as a leader, a rapper, a friend, a son— and he shouldn’t miss it or feel exposed without it. But it’s like he’s missing something important without knowing what it is, even. The hole it leaves in him drags at what little energy he might have had to spare.

 

 

He should be grateful, his sleep heavy but now untroubled, but it’s not enough. It’s not enough to no longer be bothered by what felt like the past and tasted like the present when he woke. It’s not enough to feel like he’s finally all caught up, because now he feels like he’s left on the end of a dangling rope, nowhere left to go.

 

 

_Is it already the end?_ he wonders, his fingers tired of the rope and body exhausted with it.

 

 

But the end doesn’t satisfy him. He aches for more, though more of? of? more of what, exactly? He’s not sure.

 

 

He thinks they’re on the edge of something, him and Jaehyo. They’re just barely at the edge and closing in towards something that promises to be immense. He can almost taste the promise in the kisses they don’t share, that thread that unlocks his dreams from their caches and makes him feel like he’s done this before, and he’s set in this path and it promises— 

 

 

It promises— 

 

 

—

 

 

But suddenly their debut catapults their lives forward. Whatever schedule they may have been on is cut abruptly short, truncated by company-enforced schedules that take away all of their free time and more. There’s barely time to sleep, eat, practice, perform, attend all the required shows, and no spare time to think. In the ensuing chaos, Jiho barely has energy to think about Jaehyo more than a member of his band. 

 

 

He’s lost so much of his bodily extremities to exhaustion, Jaehyo exists as a bare reminder of some other life that he can’t reach. And when he stretches out, overreaches in desperation or hunger or want and manages to grasp something else, even then it’s only the few times when he gets the shower with the water still warm. 

 

 

By that point, he’s always too tired to jerk off—he’s so exhausted he can’t even get aroused. He just leans up against the shower wall and lets the precious warmth run over him, eyes closed to the damp and lips pressed to the wet tile. He breathes in the steam, letting the warmth fill his lungs and shorten his breath just the same— as love, lust, that far-off curl of desire— and tries to focus on Jaehyo’s lips, how they’d feel under his own. It’s been so long, he doesn’t even remember what it is to kiss someone. He can barely imagine Jaehyo walking him to bed and gathering him up amongst the sheets, pulling his compliant limbs into his embrace and holding him until he sleeps. 

 

 

He’s 19 years old and his most important fantasy doesn’t have any orgasms involved— he doesn’t know who he’s become. 

 

 

— 

 

 

Then Jaehyo kisses him.

 

 

—

 

 

Answers don’t come to his lips. Jaehyo’s mouth is warm and soft and pressing to his, drawing him close and inside and Jiho can feel Jaehyo’s chest rise under his hand, and the light drift of Jaehyo’s breath across his cheek. It’s just human, intimate in its imperfection. A curl of heat shocks through Jiho’s exhaustion to travel down his spine so quick he needs to pull back for breath. 

 

 

Jaehyo’s smell is pressing in on his skin like a lick of warmth, a promise. But it doesn’t tell him anything more than his want— his single want, now, here, for him. No revelations come to him in suddenness. 

 

 

Ghosts tremble in the corners of Jiho’s visions, an admonition? Their whispers threaten Jiho’s ears, warnings that he won’t hear nor heed. Ghosts are cold and lost, and Jiho is so warm from Jaehyo’s lips that he leans in and presses his mouth to them again, liking the slickness, the newness of this. He’s wanted it for so long that he can’t pretend he doesn’t, not now.

 

 

“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Jaehyo whispers to him later, the words against his lips close enough Jiho can taste it, the lie. 

 

 

Jiho has lied so many times, to so many people. He can taste it like camphor, a bitter antiseptic on his tongue. Jaehyo is trying to cleanse this. 

 

Jaehyo’s eyes can’t lie. They’re liquid ink in the half-darkness of Jiho’s bedroom, framed by messy hair that Jiho had just minutes ago touched with abandon, without reserve. And yet here is Jaehyo, his voice gravelly and half-unsure. Jiho can recognize an out when he hears one, so he just leans back, his skin wanting and his heartbeat striking against his veins like a warning— _no, no, no, no._

 

 

“Okay,” he says, his fingers curling on his own thighs, Jaehyo’s body suddenly off limits. He _wants_ , and Jaehyo is so close, but— _no,_ “If you want.”

 

 

Jaehyo looks away, and the lie cuts across his face.

 

 

It feels like a mistake.

 

 

—

 

 

That’s how they start. It’s how it ends, too, though Jiho doesn’t know it at the time.

 

 

After that, Jiho doesn’t sleep well, except when Jaehyo comes to him. It happens just once— then twice, five times—then Jiho stops caring about counting. It never seems like the “last time,” no matter what Jaehyo whispers against his skin before slipping away into the dark. Jaehyo is quiet about wanting him, desperate—almost— but Jiho can’t deny he’s much the same. It’s something of what he needs, even if its not everything, and in this industry of half-won battles and intransigent rule makers, he’s left hollow for the things he truly wants.

 

 

In the light, still Jaehyo pulls back from his touch, looks away when he speaks. It feels worse than before, like Jaehyo is deliberately trying to hurt him. 

 

 

They never wake up together. Jiho is getting sick of seeing his sheets empty in the morning light.

 

 

Jiho wonders if instead of two planets whose inherent gravity will pull them, crashing, together, they’ve already been pulled as closely as they can and one of them is a comet being spun, flung, back into space.

 

 

—

 

 

It’s not even that easy. 

 

 

The scandal cuts it all off earlier than he thought. He isn’t paying attention, distracted by the heat and his tiredness and those thoughts that constantly flicker at the back of his mind, slightly dulled reminders of the taste of Jaehyo’s skin. Jaehyo hasn’t touched him since they arrived in Thailand, and Jiho shouldn’t miss it but the tropical weather ignites the flame of desire low in his belly. 

 

 

They’re sent home, cut off. Jiho skips out on the dorm and takes refuge at his mom’s place in the city. It’s lonely during the day, quiet without the footsteps of the other members and their various managers, wandering around at all hours. Kyung isn’t there to make ramyun at 2AM, or Minhyuk to stay up late watching trash TV shows with Taeil. He thinks he won’t miss the clutter, the clatter of all the extra people, but the flat seems empty without their voices. 

 

 

He misses Jaehyo most of all, a pain in his chest that makes him want to curl up on the couch and never leave. It’s a stupid feeling, a deep-seated want turned to hurt, so he works instead. 

 

 

He thinks he’s got it all covered, weeks passing without word from the others, no guarantee they’ll return to anything but the cancellation of their contracts, but he’s spending every night in the studio, working on new tracks and feeling productive. It’s not doing anything, he’s not being the leader that he needs to be and he knows this, but it feels like enough. It feels like all he can do. His phone is silent, no messages from anyone, so he’s stopped checking it. 

 

 

_It won’t be in this life._ Now it feels like a certainty. 

 

 

He can’t sleep, but it’s not a big miss. Months went by before debut that he hardly slept. It won’t be too hard to do it again. So he stays awake like every hour is a giant _fuck you_ in the face of their growing group of haters, like it’ll prove that they won’t fail in the future because he’s using that time to work. And he stops feeling sick after the first three days, because he doesn’t even want to eat anymore.

 

 

Except there’s something to be said for exhaustion, and that’s that it makes you feel drunk. He feels like he’s at the bad end of a soju bottle by the time he texts Jaehyo at 5AM on the fifth night of his giant brigade, something stupid like _i miss you,_ or _i can’t believe this bullshit exile_ , or _i used to dream abt u like we met before_.

 

 

There’s no immediate response. His eyesight wavers in the streetlights, and his throat hurts. It’s not another rejection— it’s 5AM and the dawn is barely beginning to fade the night sky, there’s no way Jaehyo is awake— but it doesn’t matter.

 

 

He goes home and falls asleep on his face before he can regret the words. When he wakes up in the early hours of morning his phone is dead and he doesn’t remember having sent them.

 

 

—

 

 

Unease tracks over his skin all day, like he’s forgotten something. In the studio, he can’t concentrate, and he turns down his friends’ entreaties to go out. 

 

 

His exhaustion is limned with sleepiness, finally, and he heads home with the intention of sleeping for 14 hours straight. The click of the door echoes through the empty flat and all the lights are off. It’s familiar but not right. Lights from the apartment building across the courtyard glow through the half-drawn curtains, and a sense of beforeness, a deja vu, strikes him. 

 

 

Stretching his body out, he lies down on the couch. Dreams filter behind his closed eyelids, too early, he’s not asleep yet, they don’t make sense, heavy chaos, before he’s dragged into the darkness of sleep. 

 

 

—

 

 

Jiho wakes slowly, the dream still clinging to the corners of his eyelashes, slow to lift. He’s overly warm, wrapped in a sweatshirt he put on three days ago on the way to the studio. But he’s not on the couch of the studio, halogenic lights burning through his sight, but collapsed against someone in the soft warmth of dawn. Their steady breaths make his head rise and fall as he struggles awake. His heart is heavy in his chest, a foreign feeling made familiar through a long dream that he’s already let go of. 

 

 

It’s not a surprise to see Jaehyo next to him, arms slung around Jiho’s shoulder, limp in sleep. It’s where he’s’ supposed to be, there, next to Jiho. Always next to Jiho.

 

 

Those fine eyelashes spread dark across the slope of his cheekbones, his small mouth a little open as he breathes, a pink stain against his pale face. His sweater, an old one from his mother she bought him before debut, softens his shoulders. Jiho traces the shifting line of his neck, first with his eyes and then with his thumb. He thinks he’s dreaming, an extension of the previous, blending the two into one. 

 

 

Jaehyo shifts into the touch, waking more quickly than Jiho. He blinks, big, dark eyes confused for a moment before they settle on Jiho’s face. A smile curves the corner of his lips, just above where Jiho’s thumb strokes the jut of his chin. The heat in his chest tightens, pulls at him, and Jiho doesn’t think anymore.

 

 

He doesn’t know if he’s awake or still in the clutch of that dream that felt overly real, familiar in a clear way, but it doesn’t matter. He leans in close and brushes his lips against Jaehyo’s, kisses the corner of his mouth. 

 

 

“Stay with me, this time,” Jiho murmurs, knowing. the words are new on his lips, stutter his heart. His voice is gravelly with sleep and this isn’t how he wanted to say it, but here he is, here they are—

 

 

Jaehyo’s breath hitches a little. His scent is heavy with sleep and Jiho wants to fall into it, but Jaehyo’s hand touches his shoulder. Suddenly he feels jerked awake. 

 

 

_Not allowed. Be quiet._

 

 

He shoots back, suddenly aware of the present. All the things he’s wanted— they’re not allowed. All the words that have lingered on his tongue and tightened the back of his throat, all these months, they’re not allowed. 

 

 

Jaehyo is staring at him, eyes huge. Jiho is frightened, suddenly, as if he’s made a mistake. But chances are so rare and no real regret mars his heartbeat. He opens his mouth to apologize but he doesn’t think he can do it, not now. 

 

 

There’s a subtle shift between them, as if something fundamental has just changed. 

 

 

Jaehyo reaches out and curls one hand around the nape of Jiho’s neck. The palm is cool somehow, Jiho must be flushed, and the long fingers dig into the muscle for a moment before Jiho realizes. Jaehyo plus him down into his space until he can nuzzle against Jiho. The soft tip of his nose draws a wavering line across his cheek until they’re close enough to kiss.

 

 

“I will.”

 

 

—

 

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: my note to myself at the end of this fic was bitcH FINALLY hell yea
> 
> hope u like, audrey
> 
> I also want to thank Taffa and Amanda and Sara for listening to me whine all the time about this fic, also my sister who heard me talk about it for the past six months and is surely wondering if I will ever finish, thank you and goodnight (it's noon).


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